Detective Conan: A Fractured Fairy Tale
by Elaienar
Summary: A collection of pointlessly parodied fairy tales.
1. The Gingerbread Man

I don't own Detective Conan. I used to own a gingerbread man, but I ate him; alas.

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**The Gingerbread Man**

(Revised, Adapted, and Pretty Much Completely Slaughtered, Grammatically Speaking)

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**O**nce upon a time there lived two very bad men whose names were not Gin and Vodka. I don't know what their names were. But whatever their names were, really, they were _called_ Gin and Vodka, so that will have to do for now.

Anyway, these two men, Gin and Vodka, lived in Tokyo, where by day they ran (respectively) a soup kitchen and a used book-store. By night they wore black clothes and killed people. As I said, they were very bad men.

One day the bad man called Vodka was siezed with a desire that was as inexplicable as it was overpowering: he wanted to be a father. (I said it was inexplicable, didn't I?) He confided in his good ... er, _bad_ friend Gin, and together they hatched an evil plan to get Vodka a child. However, being _very_ bad men, as opposed to just plain old bad men, they couldn't do anything as simple as snatching a baby out of a stroller at a train station. Oh, no, indeed. Instead, they created a whole organisation - and this took years to do, mind - of evil people dedicated to murder, abduction, robbery, etc., to help them with their evil plan. They did this without telling any of their subordinates what their eventual aim was, too; they called their objective "Pandora" and generally gave them the impression that it had something to do with riches beyond measure or immortality. Or something. As a matter of fact, their subordinates didn't even know that they were their subordinates, since Gin and Vodka masqueraded as subordinates themselves. Before long they could have ruled Japan if they'd felt like it.

But this was only Stage A of their evil plan. Once it was completed, they went on to Stage B, which meant blackmailing a promising young scientist, Miyano Shiho by name, into creating a poison that was capable of (you'll never believe this) reversing ten years of growth in anyone who took it.

They were most awfully clever.

As soon as they had the pill, they dumped the organisation they'd created without so much as an it's-been-nice and skipped off to find someone to poison. As it happened, the first youngish person they came across was something of a celebrity: highschool detective Kudou Shinichi, out on a not-really-a-date with his _friend_ Mouri Ran; and they figured they could do worse than have somebody famous for Vodka's long-awaited son. So they contrived to draw him away from the Mouri girl. Then thet hit him over the head and poisoned him and stashed him in the back of Vodka's used book-store while they fixed up some fake birth certificates and things and changed his name to Edogawa Conan. Then they sat around and waited for him to wake up.

Now, what do you suppose that boy did the instant he woke?

I'll tell you. It's a cruel, cruel thing, considering all the hardship they had gone through to catch him; the amount of people they'd murdered and kidnapped and robbed, all to get Vodka a child, but it happened and it has to be said: the instant Conan woke up, _he ran away_.

Naturally neither Gin nor Vodka was pleased about this.

"Stop!" they shouted, and ran after the boy; but Conan didn't stop. He ran faster.

Before long he had lost them in a crowd. The he slowed down a little, and normally, in his position, he ought to have chanted something - a witty little ditty; something like "Run, run, as fast as you can; you can't catch me, I'm Edogawa Co_nan_," - but he utterly refused to do so when I suggested it to him. You see, Shinichi, being a detective, was rather clever, and he had figured out long before he was ever kidnapped that if you're running away from someone and don't want them to find you, it's rather a giveaway to sing at them, because then they can follow your voice.

Conan was even more clever than Gin and Vodka put together.

So Conan didn't sing. He ran on, a little slower, until he happened to bump into three children who were playing at detectives. The children had been wanting someone to play the murderer, so when they saw a boy about their own age running past looking hunted, they decided it should be him.

"Stop!" cried the first child, Ayumi.

"In the name of the law," added the second, Genta.

"Anything you say ... " began the third, Mitsuhiko; but Conan didn't stop to hear about anything he said. He ran faster.

Before long he had lost them as well. Then he slowed down a little, as before, and, as before, didn't sing anything at all.

After a while he passed his not-girlfriend, Mouri Ran, who, as soon as she saw him, shouted "Shinichi! Stop!"

Understandably embarrassed about his, ah, condition, Conan picked up the pace and fairly flew. So did Ran. It took him much, much longer to shake her off his trail than it had taken to get rid of his other pursuers, and when he finally did, he was so tired that he decided he needed to rest a bit. But he also needed to keep on going. So, as he happened to be near a river at the moment, he took a ride on a ferry.

He thought it would be nice and quiet, as he was the only passenger, but he couldn't have been more wrong; for as the ferry reached the middle of the river the ferrier tore off his whiskers, glasses, and false nose, and was Ran.

"Shinichi!" cried Ran.

"I can explain!" cried Conan.

"Now, look here," said Ran severely, "you silly!"

There wasn't really anything he could say to that, now, was there?

"You silly," continued Ran, "if you'd only stopped when I told you to, I could have explained that I've got the antidote."

"I just didn't want you to get hurt," explained Conan, "so I thought I'd better ... WHAT?"

"An-ti-dote," said Ran, "which I've got." She waved her hand in front of his face, and lo and behold, there was a pill in it which certainly appeared to be the antidote.

"But where did it come from?"

"Ah," said Ran sagely, "in my great wisdom I ... well, to tell you the truth, it fell out of a plothole. But aren't you glad?"

He was, rather.

So then he took the antidote, and when he had grown back to his usual size he thanked her with many blushes and stammers, as is appropriate for a hero from a shounen manga. Then he boldly ventured to take her hand in his, and opened his mouth, and at that moment my mother called me away to help her with dinner, so I'm not entirely certain what happened; but anyway when I got back they were discussing baby names and arguing over what color the living-room carpet should be.

Now isn't that nice?

**The End**

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**A/N**: I rather think this was inspired by reading "The Not-Stinky Cheese Man". There isn't a whole lot of similarity between the two stories, except that they're both adulterated fairy tales, but there you have it. Before I read "The Not-Stinky Cheese Man" this story was not in my head, and after I did, it was. I may, however, be committing the "post hoc propter hoc" fallacy. 


	2. The Sleeping Beauty

I don't own Detective Conan or The Sleeping Beauty. I tried kidnapping the Sleeping Beauty once but she was too heavy. It was all the stuffed peacocks, I guess.

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**The Sleeping Beauty**

(Upside-Down, Inside-Out, and Probably Backwards as Well)

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**O**nce upon a time there were two small kingdoms whose rulers were very friendly with one another, for they had made a pact and agreed to seal the pact by having a marriage arranged between their children - when they had children; at the time that they made the pact, neither was even married.

But time passed, and presently one king took to wife a princess from a distant land, and the next year she gave birth to a son who was named Kogoro. A few years later the other king married a rich widow, and the next year she, too, had a child: a daughter who was named Eri. Everyone was very pleased at how neatly Fate had fixed things. Prince Kogoro's parents sent a letter of congradulations to Princess Eri's parents as soon as they heard, and invited them to come visit in ten years or so, when they would have completed preparations for the betrothal feast.

So they did; and a magnificant feast it was. There was all manner of kinds of food and drink, and entertainers, and the plates were all of gold, and the guests were all dressed like royalty. As a matter of fact, many of the guests _were_ royalty. Prince Kogoro's parents had invited everyone of importance - fairies, monarchs, and nobility - in all of ten kingdoms - except one. In the hurry-scurry of preparations, they had, until the last moment, quite forgotten one bad-tempered old fairy. When they did remember her, it was far too late; and they thought it was just as well, since she was always so cross.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Near the end of the feast, when everyone was sitting back and loosening their belts surreptitiously (except Prince Kogoro and Princess Eri, who were in a corner playing mahjong and discussing - that is to say, arguing over - philosophy) the doors flew open and in stormed the bad-tempered old fairy, who had somehow got wind of the feast and was much put out at not being invited.

"My good fairy," said Prince Kogoro's father, trying to be placating and failing miserably, "how - how unexpected."

The fairy glared.

"Do have a seat," suggested Prince Kogoro's mother, not very hopefully.

The fairy glared balefully.

"Have some tea," said Prince Kogoro's father, not hopefully at all.

Then the fairy spoke.

"I'm _suing_," she said, and left the room in a dead silence.

So presently Prince Kogoro's parents found themselves on the business end of a suit for discrimination.

They were rather surprised.

Oh, are you surprised too? Let me explain. At that time, witches were an endangered species (they had always been a minority, even before it became a fad for princes to run about cutting their heads off) and a great many things that people had been accustomed to do to witches without a second thought had become illegal overnight. Cutting their heads off, for one thing (this is why so many fairy tales refer to the hero simply as "the prince" - the prince might have gotten in trouble if his name had been mentioned); and for another, there was a newfangled thing called "affirmative action" which meant that for every seven fairies invited to a christening, birthday, betrothal, or wedding, there had to be at least one witch.

Now you may be wondering why I am explaining about all this when the bad person in question was a fairy. I'll explain that, too. You see, she _was_ a fairy, genetically, but legally she was a witch, since over 99 of her spells were harmful. There, better now?

Anyway, Prince Kogoro's parents didn't have a leg to stand on, as they most certainly had not invited even one witch to the feast when they'd had seven fairies. Things were looking very bad indeed (the witch was calling for capital punishment, and, being a witch, she was probably going to get it) when one of the younger fairies intervened. Instead of being put to death, the King and Queen and Prince Kogoro, with their entire household, were sentenced to sleep for a hundred years, or until Prince Kogoro received the Kiss of True Love. Once it had been decided that Princess Eri's parents wuld rule the kingdom in it's king's absence, the sentence was carried out, and the Royal family was locked at the top of a tower in the middle of an uninhabited forest to discourage fangirls.

Then everyone promptly forgot that Prince Kogoro and his parents had ever existed. The kingdom ran as smoothly under Princess Eri's father as it had under Prince Kogoro's father. Everything was as it had been before - except that Princess Eri had no one to argue with. And she had suddenly and inexplicably decided to become a lawyer. Her parents were greatly astonished, and secretly worried that she might not be able to marry a man of her own station (who had ever heard of a prince marrying a lawyer?) but they let her do as she liked. After all, she was their only child.

Before she was twenty, Princess Eri had become the most successful, most famous, and most beautiful lawyer in twenty kingdoms. She astonished everyone by winning every single case she took in hand. She astonished them further by refusing to be paid for her services. Then she astonished them greatly by demanding that a case from many years before (Witch vs. Royal Family) be re-submitted, and that she be allowed to defend the Royal family.

She couldn't imagine why everyone was so surprised. _I_ think it probably had something to do with the fact that she always referred to her ex-fiancee, Prince Kogoro, as "that idiot". I _may_ be wrong.

At any rate, a Princess is a powerful person when she wants something, and the case was brought back up with a new judge and a new jury. All the principle witnesses were hunted down and dragged back. There was some confusion as to what they should do about having the accused present, but in the end they just shipped the beds back from the tower and shoved them into a corner of the courtroom. Then the trial began anew.

I have Princess Eri's speech written down somewhere, I think, but I can't seem to find it. You'll simply have to take my word for it when I tell you that a better, more eloquent, more moving speech had never been made. Half the courtroom was in tears by the end of the first paragraph, and that was a lot of people, since the case had been so widely publicised.

Her speech rested upon the fact that Prince Kogoro's paternal grandfather had been turned into a toad by the witch which they had failed to invite, and that they had known no other witches, and as Section III, Part B of the Witch Protection Act of 1296 clearly stated, no one was obliged to invite witches who had caused them or their family damage already, and if there weren't any witches to invite, they could not be sued for not inviting any.

Of course she won the case; the judge ruled that the orignal sentence had been a mistake and must be reversed at once.

_That_ was when the real trouble started, for the only way to lift the curse was to fulfill one of the conditions, and obviously they couldn't sleep for a hundred years _at once_; and the judge turned solemnly to Princess Eri and said:

"As it is by your efforts in this case that the name of this most honourable family is cleared, I am sure that you will have no objection to raising the curse as well. You will, of course, kiss the prince."

The princess nearly fell over.

When she had recovered her balance, however, she said a few things which made it abundantly clear that there was no "of course" about it.

The judge smoothed his immaculate white suit, adjusted his monocle, and stared at Princess Eri in some confusion. "I fear I do not understand," he said, and there _might_ have been a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I," said Princess Eri, clarifying matter, "am _not_ going to kiss him."

"I beg your pardon," said the judge, reproachfully; "do you mean to say that, having spent much time, and gone to great pains to prove that the sentence passed upon him and his family and their household was unjust to an extreme, you now refuse to be the means of reversing that must unfortunate sentence?"

"Yes," said Princess Eri.

"Order in the court," said the judge, sternly, to the howling reporters. "Your majesty, this will not do at all."

"I don't see why not," said the princess. "Get somebody else to do it."

"Order!" said the judge, more reproachfully than ever. "Someone go suppress those fangirls," he added. "Princess Eri, this is simply unacceptable. If you do not kiss that young man this instant, you will be held in contempt of court."

When he put it like that, of course ... So Princess Eri agreed to break the curse, and the judge considerately told everyone to go away outside ("This isn't a cinema, you reporter reprobates," he said, and he was _definitely_ grinning when he did - what kind of a judge grins, I ask you?); and as I was outside with everyone else, I don't know precisely what happened. However, I suppose she _did_ kiss him, because presently they came outside together, holding hands and blushing rather. And they were married suddenly the next day, and later they had a daughter, who was named Ran, and Princess Ran --

But that is another story.

**The End**

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**A/N**: A thousand thank-yous to my reviewers. You have no idea how pleased being reviewed makes me - I tend to bounce around like an immobility-challenged rubber ball with ADHD, skirts, and a liking for burnt marshmallows. Well, now you do have an idea. But I won't be put off by lack of reviews; I haven't read anything by Jasper Ffordes - I see now that this was a mistake and will have to remedy it; and I'm glad I amuse y'all. I do aim to please. 


	3. The Frog Prince

I don't own _Detective Conan_ or _The Frog Prince_. I think _The Frog Prince_ is probably in the public domain, though.

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**The Frog Prince**

(Pretty Much Completely Slaughtered, Generally Speaking)

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**O**nce upon a time there lived a King and a Queen who, in the manner of so many fairy-tale kings and queens, had only one child: a daughter named Ran, whom they loved very much.

Now Princess Ran was a most accomplished and gifted princess, besides being as beautiful as the sun on a clear morning sun shining on a pond full of clean water and goldfishes (the magic kind that are real gold), and as kind as kind could be. She could sing like a bird and dance like the wind; she spoke seven different languages and had trig on toast for breakfast; she embroidered bautifully and cooked deliciously; and, moreover, she had attained the highest level possible in every form of martial arts known to man.

Add to this the fact that both King Kogoro, her father, and Queen Eri, her mother, had inherited kingdoms from _their_ parents, both of which would of course become hers in the event of her parents' deaths, and I dare say that no one will be surprised to hear that eligible young (or, alternately, not) men flocked around her like Harry Potter fans around a bookstore on the eve of the release of the latest book - which, by the way, was quite good.

But no matter how much and how earnestly they flocked, Princess Ran would have none of them. (This pleased her father.) Let one of them pluck up enough courage to so much as _begin_ to propose, and she would, with killing kindness, turn him down. Let him persist, and she would simply knock him down.

The suitors were generally very surprised at this cold (for her) reaction; but _we_, of course, are not; for we know that the affections of Princess Ran had long been engaged elsewhere - which is to say that she was already head over heels in love with someone else.

That "someone else" was Prince Shinichi from the neighboring kingdom. He had served first as a page and then as a squire in her father's court until he was fourteen, at which time his father had died, his elder brother had become king, and he had been called back by his mother to support and succor her in her widowhood. Prince Shinichi and Princess Ran had been best friends practically from the moment they had met; and Princess Ran had been in love with him since she was twelve, though of course she would rather have died than admitted it, even to herself. That is what comes of being a main character in a shounen manga.

Anyway, even after Prince Shinichi had returned to his brother's kingdom, he made frequent visits to King Kogoro's castle (Princess Ran couldn't imagine why); and on one such visit, a few weeks before Princess Ran's seventeenth birthday, there was something different in his manner - something that began to make our heroine suspect that Prince Shinichi's feelings towards her were not so different from her feelings towards him.

...Which was to say that he felt a great deal of _friendship_ towards a girl who was practically his _sister_ and was definitely his _best friend_.

(Emphasis hers.)

Unfortunately, half-way through the time Prince Shinichi had intended to stay at King Kogoro's court, he received an urgent message from home and had to leave suddenly. Princess Ran, of course, came to see him off, and they had a moment - no more than a minute - together alone, during which time Prince Shinichi stammered terribly, and didn't quite manage to say something before the messenger came dashing into the room to tell him they must hurry. So he was gone; but he left her with a warm, hopeful feeling in her chest - and also his soccer ball, which had rolled under a bush and been forgotten in the hurry-scurry.

Princess Ran waved as Prince Shinichi's entourage set off, and then went back inside and returned to her princessly duties, going about them with a gladdened heart. She even sang and danced as she worked. King Kogoro remarked to his wife that he had never seen her so happy, and she must be very glad to get rid of that silly Shinichi boy. Queen Eri, in her usual observant way, remarked that her daughter had sent every last one of her suitors packing in the half-hour since Prince Shinichi had left.

On the third day after Prince Shinichi's departure, it happened that Princess Ran, wandering the castle grounds, found the prince's soccer ball in a rose-bush. She rescued it and resumed her walk, kicking it before her and smiling remininscently. So absorbed in her memories was she that it took her a moment to realise that she was kicking the air and that the soccer ball had rolled in the exactly the wrong direction and fallen down the shaft of an old, dried-up well; and that the shaft was far too narrow for her to get down herself and retreive it.

"Bother!" said Princess Ran; and sitting down by the side of the well, she began to ponder.

She had pondered for only a few minutes when something shuffled in the grass in front of her; and when she looked up there was a small boy in front of her: short, thin, wide-eyed, bespectacled, and solemn. She was sure she had seen him before (was he one of the pages?) but she couldn't remember his name, so she asked him what is was.

"Conan," said the small boy. "I saw your ball fall in the well, Princess. What will you give me if I get it for you?"

"_Can_ you get it?" asked Princess Ran, doubtfully.

"I can try," said Conan. "What will you give me?"

"Anything you like," said the princess, springing up happily.

So the boy asked for a rope, and when she had gotten it for him, he made a harness of one end and tied the other to a tree and lowered himself into the well; and presently back up he came, and he had the soccer ball with him. Princess Ran thanked him many times, and was just going to ask him what it was he wanted when a maid came running up the path and told her breathlessly that there was news of Prince Shinichi - bad news - and that her father wanted her. The princess told the boy to keep the ball, and that she would come back as soon as she could; and then she picked up her skirts and fairly flew.

The news was not good at all. One ragged, footsore page from Shinichi's entourage had staggered back into King Kogoro's kingdom to tell them that not a day's journey from the castle they had been attacked by Gin ("A djinn?" said King Kogoro, doubtfully; but the page said no, it was a Black Witch whose name was Gin; King Kogoro said: "Ah!") and they had been defeated and routed. The horses had gone mad with fear and run away, trampling provisions and people alike in their terror. To make things much, much worse, when at last they had gathered back together after the witch had gone, they had found that Prince Shinichi was not among them; and after they had combed the area for hours they had at last come to the conclusion that the witch had kidnapped him.

In the hubbub that followed this revelation, all thought of the child who had rescued her friend's soccer ball flew from Princess Ran's mind. Indeed, for a moment almost everything was gone in a terrible, empty moment of utter horror; but she was made of sterner stuff than many a princess before her, and instead of fainting or crying she saw to it that the exhausted page was fed and cleaned and his wounds bandaged, and after that she went to her room and let herself cry for one minute exactly.

Then she washed her face and put up her hair and went to supper, and concealed her grief so well that no one who saw her suspected that one minute in her bedroom, and even her own mother wondered at this sudden unconcern for the fate of her friend.

The meal had hardly begun when the old, half-blind gatekeeper shuffled inside with his hands in the pockets of his white coat, to say that there was a child outside who wanted to see the princess about a ball.

"Oh?" said Princess Ran, blankly, and then, remembering: "Oh, of course. Bring him in, please."

The gatekeeper shuffled out and then back in, bringing with him a small, grubby little boy with a soccer ball tucked under one arm; and he stood him before the table where the royal family ate, and told him (unneccesarily) to turn out his toes and straighten his back and for goodness' sake don't fidget when they talk to you.

Princess Ran smiled as well as she could at Conan and said: "I thank you for the service which you did me, and I apologise for not repaying my debt sooner. Ask me now for anything you want, and if it is in my power I will give it to you."

Conan looked at the princess solemnly through his thick glasses. "Anything?" he asked.

"Anything," said Princess Ran.

"Then," said the boy, "I ask that you let me be your constant companion."

"Say _what_?" demanded King Kogoro, shooting out of his seat and glaring at Conan.

"'Companion'," said Conan, and his tone was level even though his cheeks were flaming; "'a person who is frequently in the company of another' - but since I added the word 'constant' in front of 'companion', I'm asking that Princess Ran keep me in her company _all_ the time."

King Kogoro glared at him. "Why should she do any such thing?"

"Because she promised."

"I did," said the princess. "Is something the matter, Father?"

"'Matter'?" said King Kogoro, staring. "'Matter'? He's a _boy_! I know what he's thinking behind that innocent look!"

The queen and the princess looked at Conan with raised eyebrows. He did look remarkably innocent, and from the blank look on his face, he had no idea what the king was talking about any more than a babe in arms would.

"My dear!" protested Queen Eri.

"He's just a child!" cried Princess Ran, indignantly. "How can you say such things? And I _did_ promise. You wouldn't want me to break a promise, would you, Father?"

"Well, no, but - "

"Then obviously I should grant his request, shouldn't I, Father?"

"Well, yes, but - "

"Then that's settled," said Princess Ran, rising gracefully from her seat. "I must beg to be excused, Father - Mother ... Come, Conan."

Things were a little hectic for the rest of that day, but Princess Ran was glad of it, since it took her mind off her vanished friend - come to think of it, it was Prince Shinichi that Conan had reminded her of when she had first seen him. While King Kogoro was arranging for search parties and sending messages to all the surrounding kingdoms and Queen Eri was digging through her law-books, trying to find a law she thought she remembered that said that witches could only kidnap princes in their own territory, Princess Ran was setting up a trundle bed in the vacant maid's room that opened onto her own and doing all her usual duties, with Conan tagging after her looking alternately forlorn and innocent, and with the added strain of having to smile when she felt more like crying.

By the time night fell and everyone had to go to bed, it was hard to tell who was more exhausted. Conan wasn't - he had gotten more awake, if that was possible, and when Princess Ran retired to her chambers he kept kicking the soccer ball around until she begged him to stop, at which time he retreated to his bedroom and (from the sound of it) drummed his feet on the floor. And people kept on walking up and down the corrider outside.

The princess was already in bed, with the covers over her head, when the door to Conan's room creaked.

"Princess Ran?"

Princess Ran sat up, and perhaps something of the frustration she felt leaked into her voice. Certainly Conan seemed to cringe when she said "What is it?"

"Could you ... " stammered Conan; "c-could you give me a goodnight kiss?"

He sounded so timorous that the princess instantly repented of her crossness. "Of course, Conan," she said; and she got out of bed and reached down to pick him up.

At that moment the door burst open and King Kogoro hurtled through, with Queen Eri latched on to one of his arms. He was shouting loudly and almost unintelligibly, but the words "don't you _dare_ kiss him" were scattered liberally throughout his sentences, as were references to what he was going to do to Conan for seducing his daughter.

"Father!" cried the princess, shocked.

"I won't have you marrying some six-year-old!" bellowed King Kogoro, swiping at Conan.

"My dear," said Queen Eri, as calmly as any woman can who is having to physically restrain a husband intent on infanticide, "don't be silly. This _isn't_ the twentieth century, you know. There aren't any laws against this kind of thing yet. Besides, I think they make a cute couple."

Of course this did not help things at all.

Princess Ran and Conan turned identical shades of red at the same instant, and King Kogoro was rendered completely speechless with rage. In leiu of saying something which ought not be said in mixed company, he made another furious grab at Conan and caught hold of one of his arms.

"And," continued Queen Eri, who evidently had never heard about how sometimes you should stop while you're ahead, or at least not very far behind; "you could do far worse for a son-in-law," she said. "Think of Prince Eisuke and then tell me you still don't want Ran to kiss Conan."

"Mother!" cried the princess, shocked.

"I don't want Ran to kiss _anyone_," howled King Kogoro, tugging on Conan's arm. "Come here, you wretch!"

Princess Ran seized hold of Conan's other arm. "Do stop pulling on him, Father - it's not like that - he's only a child - and it's only a goodnight kiss -see!"

She made an attempt to demonstrate what she meant by "only a goodnight kiss", but somehow, in the hubbub and hurly-burly of King Kogoro shouting for guards and handcuffs and the army and Conan's instant execution, and tugging on Conan's arm; and Queen Eri shrieking something about a law that said that princesses could kiss anyone they liked, and pulling on King Kogoro's arm; and Conan spluttering wordlessly, red with embarrassment, and trying to wriggle away from the princess and the king at the same time ... but somehow, as I say - either because Princess Ran's aim was off, or because Conan wriggled in exactly in the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time - somehow Princess Ran missed Conan's forehead by about six inches, and ... well, it has to be said: she planted a kiss smack-dab on his lips.

There was a moment in which everyone except Princess Ran and Conan froze and gasped.

Then there was a sort of explosion, and Princess Ran found that instead of Conan, she had hold of Prince Shinichi, which was not a very displeasing discovery to make, considering the amount of worrying she'd been doing in the hours since she had heard that he had disappeared. King Kogoro, however, was less than thrilled.

"What the devil do you mean by all this?" he roared. "Stop kissing my daughter!"

(This was unneccesary and uncalled-for.)

"I - I'm sorry," said Prince Shinichi, rather red-faced. "I didn't mean to - no, I did, but I wanted to say - what I mean is - oh, blast it! Ran! Will you marry me?"

"Yes," said Princess Ran.

"Now see here - !" began King Kogoro, explosively.

"My dear," said Queen Eri, "you _know_ the rules: once a princess kisses a prince, she has to marry him."

"Yes, but - "

"My _dear_."

"Oh, very well," grumbled King Kogoro. "But you're not sleeping in _here_, my lad!"

Off he went, dragging the reluctant and astonished prince behind him, while Queen Eri remained to offer congratulations on the engagement and advice about the wedding.

I would like to say that this was the end of their troubles, but I would be lying if I did, since it wasn't. It _would_ have been the end, if King Kogoro hadn't mistaken a dungeon for a guest-bedroom, locked Prince Shinichi in out of habit, and accidentally thrown the key into a well; but even though it was a trouble, it was only a minor one, and after Princess Ran had knocked the door down they were able to get back to planning the wedding; and in the end they _did_ live happily ever after, as was customary for princes and princesses in those days.

**The End**

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**A/N**: I'm afraid this fic doesn't live up to the standards set by the first two. My brother cracked up over the end of it (from where the eavesdroppers make their appearance) but the fairy tale is completely slaughtered and the characters aren't much better - can anyone here imagine Conan asking for a bedtime kiss, even if it would reverse the effect of the poison? 

Thanks again (and more) for all the lovely reviews!


	4. Snow White Part One

I don't own _Detective Conan_, though I wouldn't mind it at all if I did. I wouldn't mind owning _Snow White_ either, because sometimes I want help with chores, but I don't own her either.

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**Snow White and the Seven Dwarves**

Part One

(Very Revised and Greatly Altered)

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**O**nce upon a time there lived a king and a queen who were childless and upset about it, as is often the case with fairy-tale kings and queens; and, as is often the case with fairy-tale kings and queens, after a while they stopped being childless and had a baby. They named her Aoko, which _isn't_ known for happening very often in fairy-tales, but is fine all the same. Aoko is a nice name.

Aoko was a very beautiful princess. She had hair as brown as the prettiest brown thing you can think of, eyes as blue as the depths of the sea, teeth like pearls, and skin of a very pleasant peach color, so of course they called her "Snow White" because that's how the story goes. She was also talented and good-natured, though sometimes sharp-tongued, so _that_ was all right.

Presently her mother the queen died, as fairy-tale queens often do, and of course the king began looking about him for a new wife to be a mother to his child and a prop to him in his middle-age and so on. That was all right, too, but he needn't have picked a witch for his second wife, though perhaps he didn't mean to. However, even if it _was_ an accident, it was a dashed silly thing to do. _You_ know how witches are, dear reader. If they aren't putting frogs in the bath-water and talking to furniture, then they're disguising their ugly daughters as their pretty step-daughters and marrying them to princes. They don't seem to be able to help it, but that's even less of a consolation that the fact that they generally die at the end of the fairy-tale - especially if someone was in the bath-water when they put the frogs there.

What's done is done, however, and it's no use crying over spilt milk. The story must go on, and go on it does.

As I was saying, the king got a new wife, and she was a witch. Pretty soon everybody but the king had cottoned on to the fact that besides being a witch, she was something else unpleasant. She used to sneak into the kitchen and steal things to make potions out of, which nobody really minded, but then she would use the potions to turn people into frogs, which they minded rather a lot. Being a frog is rather uncomfortable.

It sooned turned out that the new queen's fetish for turning people into frogs was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Do you recall what I said about witches talking to furniture? Well, our witch wasn't really any different than any other witch, so of course she, too, talked to furniture. She had a mirror hung up in her boudoir, and about once an hour she would shut herself up in there with it and hold a short and to-the-point conversation with it. It started with her rhyming at it to tell her who the prettiest woman was, and ended with it telling her that she was the prettiest ever, O Queen. It _sounds_ harmless enough, doesn't it?

It wasn't.

This is why: because, one afternoon when Snow White was about fourteen, the witch-queen stepped in for her hourly seance with her mirror, and when she had asked it who the prettiest woman was, instead of replying instantly with a sort of weary smugness, the mirror hemmed.

"I beg your pardon?" said the witch-queen, much surprised.

"Oh, don't, please," said the mirror politely.

"Don't what?" said the witch-queen.

"Beg my pardon," explained the mirror. "It's quite all right. I think I have a cold, that's all."

The witch-queen began to think that perhaps she had gone mad, or the mirror. She told it to take its stupid cold and drown it and to stop dilly-dallying and tell her who the was the prettiest.

The mirror hawed.

"Stop that," said the witch-queen, crossly.

"I'm sorry," said the mirror contritely. "What was it you wanted again?"

There was an odd little twitch in the witch-queen's eye as she repeated her question.

"You know," said the mirror earnestly, "I don't think you're going to like the answer. Do go and ask someone else who will tell you you're the prettiest because they're afraid you'll kill them if they don't."

"Whatever _for_?" said the witch-queen.

"Because I can only tell the truth," the mirror explained.

By this time a frightful possibility was beginning to suggest itself to the witch-queen. She said: "Who is the fairest?" and she sounded as if she meant it.

"Well," said the mirror, and stopped.

"It's not me, is it?" said the witch-queen.

"Well," said the mirror, and paused.

"_Is it_?" said the witch-queen, with frightful calmness.

"Well," said the mirror, and halted. "Well, no, actually. It isn't."

The witch-queen said something very terrible and flung herself out of her seat to pace back and forth furiously, as witches often do when thwarted. She darted a horrible glare out of the corners of her eyes at the mirror, which cringed and then tried to pretend it hadn't.

"Who is the fairest?" asked the witch-queen, pausing to let the shimmering mirror have it full-blast.

"It's," said the mirror, and faltered.

"_Who_?"

"It's Snow White," said the mirror.

Of course this did not make the queen very happy. She said a few more things which I cannot repeat in a fanfiction rated K, but it will no doubt suffice for me to say that she was deeply distressed, not to mention utterly, completely, and indubitably teed off.

After this, she contrived to make poor Snow White's life very unpleasant for her, by dint of being rude to her, pinching her cheeks by way of a greeting every morning, refusing her anything she might possibly desire (except food), and contantly sending her into the kitchens to help the scullery-maid, which is not the sort of thing one ought to do to a princess, however pretty she might be. Witchlike, the queen also managed to do all these unpleasant things when the king was busy or out of the country, which he often was, relations with the Crimaldean Empire being somewhat strained at the time. As for poor Snow White, she bore all this patiently, mostly because she wasn't a complaining sort of girl and didn't particularly mind having to help wash dishes or mop floors (she like mopping); but also because she knew that her father wouldn't believe anything he hadn't seen with his own eyes and a magnifying glass.

This went on for almost two years, and then the witch-queen decided that she wasn't doing enough. She couldn't stand the sight of her step-daughter, and no matter how many spells she put on her face, every time she asked the mirror it told her that Snow White was the most beautiful. It made her blood boil, and after two years even tormenting the princess couldn't calm her. So she began dropping hints around the king. They were very delicate hints, but what they amounted to was that he should start looking for a husband for dear sweet darling Snow White, who was quite, quite bored knocking about the castle all day with nothing to do.

It took a great many hints (and perhaps a spell here and there) but eventually the king was brought around and agreed - reluctantly - to do something about poor-dear-sweet-darling Snow White. Not that there was much to do; the queen had already helped him decide which fellow king to approach first with his proposition, mostly because that king's son had a reputation for being decidely odd (he had apprenticed himself so a pick-lock or an acrobat or something nonsensical like that).

Of course she forgot to mention this to the king.

So away the king went, and the queen was so pleased with herself for finally getting rid of her step-daughter that she was almost nice to Snow White while he was gone. (This made Snow White extremely suspicious.) Oh, she _was_ pleased with herself - until the king returned with the prince, at which point she was _not_.

The people she had heard of this prince from had all decieved her! They had mentioned that Prince Kaito was odd, but had they mentioned that he was handsome? Oh, no, indeed. They had spoken of his being apprenticed to a circus-clown or some such thing, but had they spoken of his rich, soft voice? Oh, dear me, no. And they had murmured about the way he had of sometimes looking at people sideways, as if he was laughing at them, but had they murmured about how those sideways glances came from brilliant blue eyes? Oh, no, not at all!

The queen would have had every one of those traitorous wretches drawn and quartered for decieving her so, if only she could have remembered who they were.

(That is what you get for eavesdropping.)

Perhaps she might have born it, since her goal after all was simply to get the hated step-daughter away somewhere, and the prince was obviously impressed with her beauty when he met her; but when Snow White entered the room he forgot all about _her_. He was obviously smitten, and this the witch-queen would _not_ stand for, especially since the princess seemed to return his affection in her own awkward way. The witch began that very night to try and get her husband to send the prince away. However, the king was inordinately pleased with his prospective son-in-law (who undeniably had a very pleasing manner) and did not seem to notice her gentle, wifely hints. It seemed as if her Evil Plan (TM) would be foiled; but then circumstances came to her aid. Prince Kaito's kingdom was attacked by the Crimaldean Empire, and in the light of their proposed alliance, her husband was going to their aid. Both prince and king set off less than a month after Prince Kaito's arrival, after taking fond farewells of their respective sweethearts. The queen, with the aid of an onion, cried very much, and Princess Snow White promised Prince Kaito very faithfully that if he was killed she would murder him.

Of course once they had gone the wicked queen went straight to work. She put away her onion, went to her room, and called for her most faithful Evil Henchman (also TM); and when he had slouched into her presence she gave him a glare (at which he straightened slightly) and a knife (at which he blinked) and told him to oblige her by taking the princess off somewhere nice and private and cutting out her heart.

"And bring it back for me to eat," she added.

"Yess'm," said the Henchman, stolidly. I am very sorry to say that he was used to this kind of thing.

"And if you don't kill her properly," said the queen, "I'll have _your_ heart on a platter before you can say 'Jack's your uncle'."

"Yess'm," said the Henchman, who was also used to death threats.

Then he slouched off.

I don't know how he got the princess off by herself, because she wasn't stupid and generally didn't talk to strangers, especially if they slouched and squinted and carried blood-stined knives. I suspect, however, that he hid the knife on his person and told her that he had news of Prince Kaito; but anyway, I wasn't there, so I don't really know. I had to go do my homework, and when I came back he had already got her (and her mop, because her step-mother had set her to work again the instant her father left) off into the nearest convenient forest. He already had his knife out, even.

"What's that for?" said Snow White, looking at it with a fair amount of suspicion.

"Well, to be honest with you, princess," said the Henchman, who did have his good sides, "and not to put too much stress on it, it's for cutting out your heart with."

"Oh, is that so?" said the princess.

"It's so, princess," said the Henchman, advancing. "No offence, I hope. It ain't anything personal, and it won't hurt a bit, anyway."

"Oh, is that so?" said the princess.

Then she committed assault and battery with her mop for a considerable length of time, and with considerable force (you can get quite strong muscles in your arms from washing pots, you know); and, having done that, and considered her situation, she set off to seek her fortune.

Now a forest is not generally a good place to look for a fortune in, since pirates prefer to bury treasure on desert islands and enchanted palaces are more commonly found in the midst of green fields, of which a forest is, by definition, devoid; but, as it happened, Princess Snow White found a fortune (of a kind) in _this_ forest.

She didn't fidn it right away, however. First she had to walk, or stumble, or crawl for almost the whole rest of the day. In the course of the said day her fine clothes were torn to rags, she tripped and fell into a mud-puddle three times, and she lost both her shoes and her circlet. She did not lose her mop, which was forunate, since she had to use it to commit beasticide ones or twice, as the wolves were very rude, and also hungry. By the time the sun was beginning to set, she was wet, muddy, cold, tired, scratched, and very, very cross indeed. Also she was beginning to think that she ought to have taken the path that did not have brambles growing all over it.

It was fortunate, therefore, that she found the fortune before night fell.

The fortune was a house.

The house was very interesting.

It was shaped rather like a woodman's cottage, round, with a thatched roof, but it was far too large to be a proper woodman's cottage. Also the thatch seemed to be made of gold, the curtains were pure white lace, there was a gigantic stable in view behind it, and the artistic stack of wood by the carven door was almost certainly painted clay.

But the windows were aglow with golden light, and Snow White was cold and hungry and tired - most particularly tired. As a matter of fact, she was so tired that she dispensed with such trivial formalities as knocking and waiting, and simply staggered in the door, across the room, and collapsed onto a white-painted bed that stood against the wall. She was asleep before her head touched the pillow.

As for the startled inhabitants of the house, they stood in a semi-circle around the bed, somewhat dumbfounded, and staring with all their eyes.

Finally one of them spoke - a small, bespectacled boy whose blue eyes resembled Prince Kaito's.

"That neechan looks very tired," he remarked astutely.

This excellent observation broke the ice of surprise quite well. Three of the seven inhabitants broke out in a flurry of speech.

"Are those teeth-marks on her arms?"

"Look at those twigs in her hair!"

"She forgot to knock! Isn't that rude?"

"Is she an outlaw?"

"Maybe she's lost."

"That's my bed, where am I going to sleep?"

"What happened to her shoes?"

"What's that mop for?"

"Aha!"

The inhabitants, startled once more, turned to gaze at the declaimer of the latter exclaimation. (This was a young woman with honey-brown hair.)

"I just remember," said this person, triumphantly.

There was an expectant pause.

After the expectant pause had stretched for almost a minute, the blue-eyed boy broke it with a question.

"Remembered what, Sonoko-neechan?" he queried inquisitively.

"I remembered," said Sonoko, "that I sent for a maid last week, right after we got here. This must be her. She's obviously been lost in the woods all this time."

"Oh," said two of the inhabitants.

"Poor thing," said another two.

One said nothing in a distinctly uninterested manner.

One said nothing, not being in the mood to make contradictions and then have to explain them.

You, Dear Reader, will no doubt already have ascertained, by the simple expedient of looking back over the previous events that occurred in this narrative, that Sonoko's deduction was not entirely true at all. As a matter of fact, she _had_ sent for a maid, and the maid _had_ set out to answer the call of duty, but, in a most unfortunate turn of events, she had been eaten by a hungry bear before she arrived at her destination. However, the inhabitants did not know this, and by the time Snow White woke the next afternoon, it had been too decisively determined that she was the sought-for maid (the presence of the mop had cinched the matter for most of them) for her to have made any headway arguing that she wasn't, even if she had wanted to, which she didn't. To tell the truth, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself provided with an excuse for her unceremonious entry the night before, not to mention a job that paid a silver coin every hour, plus room and board and medical expenses, if necessary.

So, having introduced herself to her employers as Aoko (she was confident that she would be more anonymous under her true name than under her nickname) she settled right into her position as maid-of-all-work.

On the first day of her new job, she learned that the inhabitants of the house were all members, or wards of members, of the royal family in the kingdom between Prince Kaito's homeland and the Replublic of Husiwatsit. They had come out to this summer-house on the recommendation of an uncle, to whom it belonged. The two young women were the Princesses Sonoko and Ran, daughters of the king. The small freckled boy was Mitsuhiko, a cousin on the princesses' mother's side; the small dark-haired girl was Ayumi, a cousin on the princesses' father's side; the boy who looked rather like a brown beach-ball was Genta, and he was cousin to all four of them in an infuriatingly complicated way. The small serious girl was the princesses' uncle's ward, and the bespectacled boy did not appear to have any family, but was (unofficially) Princess Ran's ward.

They were all very pleasant, polite people, and Aoko soon found herself as happy and contented there as she had ever been in her father's castle.

**To Be Continued...**

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**A/N**: My first TBC ever. Aren't you pleased?

Actually it's like that because I really, really think I should post something, and I haven't quite finished it. I'm nowhere near done typing it up, either. (Ugh!) I'll try to finish it this week, but I may not post it until next week, because I'm trying very, very hard to concentrate on NaNoWriMo this month.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, the novel I'm working on this year is actually a fanfiction. An AU Detective Conan fanfiction, as if that wasn't enough. Read it. Please? And I won't ask you to review, btu I _will_ mention that I'm practicing my skills as a forshadower, hint-dropper, and detailer in this project, so I'm extremely interested in hearing predictions, guesses, etc. D

Thanks to my reviewers: sweety-1914, PunkDetectiveGeek6, 30Kyu, Lluvia-the-Wolfgirl, Animefangirl2007, Rani07, Rosienessness, katiesparks, RanMouri82, randombutterflies, and AVAAntares. May the sun shine on you but not, I hope, give you skin cancer or anything nasty like that.


	5. Snow White Part Two

I don't own _Detective Conan_, though I wouldn't mind it at all if I did. I wouldn't mind owning _Snow White_ either, because sometimes I want help with chores, but I don't own her either.

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**Snow White and the Seven Dwarves**

Part Two

(Very Revised and Greatly Altered)

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**N**ow you must not imagine, Dear Reader, that the witch-queen had been quiet all the time Princess Snow White (hereafter to be known as Princess Aoko) was settling in and attaining a reasonable level of happiness. Indeed, she had been pleased enough when the Henchman (whose good side was not large enough to cover occasions when speaking the truth would get him killed) had returned with a bloody heart. As a matter of fact, it was a pig's heart, but she didn't know that. This was just as well, since she really did eat it. All the same, just to be sure, she went to visit her mirror and asked it her customary question; and what was her delight when it replied, "You, O Queen, are the fairest in all the land." 

This was technically true, since at the very moment the queen posed her question Princess Aoko happened to fall face-first into a mud-puddle, and the result of this fall was not pretty in the least.

It was no more than a month later, however, that she went back to question the long-suffering mirror again, and as Aoko generally kept her face clean when she was staying with royalty the answer she got was different. I don't like to mention the rage she fell into when the poor, brow-beaten thing mumbled "Snow White" in answer to her customary question. (I don't understand why she didn't realize that no one who could make such horrible faces could be the fairest in the land.) When she had recovered, she demanded to know where Snow White was, and when the mirror replied to _that_ question she began plotting at once.

This time circumstances (or perhaps what people used to call Providence) did not favor her as much as formerly, for the day after _that_ the king returned home, accompanied by the army and Prince Kaito, and bearing the cheerful news that the Crimaldean Empire had learnt to keep its armies to itself. At least, it ought to have been cheerful news, but the queen, who was not very interested in politics, heartily wished that the Crimaldean Empire had not been so precious teachable at its lessons, so that she could have had more time to plot.

However, what's done is done, and she had to think very quickly, for the next topic of conversation suggested by the king and prince as they stood beside their horses in the courtyard, was Princess Snow White: to wit, her location, whereabouts, and current vicinity.

"Well," said the witch-queen, as winningly as possible, "- don't be too upset, darling, but the fact is, we think she's been eaten by wolves. Isn't that too sad? She disappeared the day you left and we've not seen her since. We _did_ find a bit of a blood-stained dress, though. Are you upset, dear?"

He was, rather.

So was Prince Kaito. Prince Kaito was _also_ very suspicious. His blue eyes were not only good for looking at, they were good for looking out of, and through them he had noticed a number of very interesting things about his hostess, one of which said things was the amount of time she spent shooting Glares of Death (TM) towards her step-daughter. It was a considerable amount of time, I can tell you.

As he was not one to waste time, he resumed his seat on his horse and politely informed the queen (for the king was, at the moment, a rather noisy puddle of salt-water) that he was going to go visit his older brother, Prince Shinichi. This did not please the queen, since Prince Shinichi had a reputation as an amateur detective; and quite a good reputation it was, too. There was nothing she could do to keep him from leaving, but once he had clattered out of the courtyard she lugged her heartbroken, sobbing husband up to his room and left him there.

A few moments later a broom shot out of the queen's bedroom window. On it was the queen, disguised like anything and carrying a covered basket full of unpleasant items, also disguised.

Well, what had Princess Aoko been doing all this time? Cleaning house, for one thing, and for another, making friends with the seven inhabitants of the bloated, gilded cottage. I've mentioned before that they were all very kind and polite; they were also very friendly, and Princess Ran took a particular liking to this odd maid. (They had their faces in common.) Princess Aoko spent almost as much time chattering with the two older girls or playing or reading to the children as she did dusting and making beds and washing dishes.

The day her father and Prince Kaito returned to the castle, it happened that everyone except Princess Aoko and little Conan had taken the gilt carriage from the gilt carriage-house, harnessed the pure white horses to it, and gone through the forest to a nearby village. The week before Princess Sonoko had been there and had seen a beautiful gold-and-glass coffin which she absolutely _had_ to have, but unfortunately at that time she had just spent _all_ of her allowance, so she had been forced to wait a week to buy it. The others were going along with her because they were all frightfully bored, except for Princess Ran, who was going to make sure her sister didn't see a beautiful gold-and-glass house that she absolutely had to have, too; but Conan had a book he wanted to finish, and Princess Aoko had decided that it would, on the whole, be more prudent to stay as far away from public eye as possible. She therefore made some excuse, the gist of which I forget, but which probably had something to do with evicting the dust-bunnies under the beds - which was an unusually cruel thing for a kind girl like her to do. What had the poor dust-bunnies ever done to her?

So Conan wandered off with his book, and Aoko, giving the innocent dust-bunnies a respite (most likely because she, too, had already forgotten what her excuse had been) wandered out to the front of the cottage and sat down with her knees drawn up to her chest and her chin in her hands. I imagine she was thinking of a certain blue-eyed prince (don't you?) but, whatever it was, she had only been thinking about it for a few minutes when she looked up and saw an old woman with a large, covered basket on her arm trudging toward the cottage.

Guess who that old woman was.

You've guessed right, Dear Reader, but Princess Aoko had no suspicions whatsoever. She got up and helped the old woman sit down on the doorstep, like the princess she was.

"Thank you kindly, dearie," said the old woman. "It isn't often a traveling peddler like myself gets kindness from strangers. Would you like a discount on something? How about a nice apple?" - And she held up a round, red-cheeked apple.

"No, thank you," said the princess, politely. "I don't really like apples."

"What about a little trinket, then?" said the old woman, undiscouraged. (She had quite a lot of interesting things in that basket.)

"No, thank you," said Princess Aoko, politely. "I don't wear jewelry."

"Well, well," said the old woman, crinkling her wrinkled face into a smile that was more like a grimace, "would a nice young lady like yourself be interested in a harmless little spell?"

Of course that should have alerted Princess Aoko instantly, but it didn't. It just made her curious. That is understandable, but still, you must admit, rather irritating.

"What does the spell do?" she asked.

"Oh," said the artful old peddler, "nothing much. It makes you grow older a little more quickly until you reach about twenty, that's all. And to _you_, dearie, I'll sell it for only three silver coins."

So Princess Aoko handed over three silver coins and the old woman took out the spell - which looked remarkably like a strip of white cloth bandage - and tied it around her wrist, just as Conan was coming around the corner of the cottage with his book; and the princess gave one tiny gasp and fell down, stone dead.

As for the queen (for of course is was she) she gave a hideous cackling laugh, dropped her basket, pulled her broom out of nowhere, and leapt onto it. She passed the others as they were returning, though none of them saw her. When they got to the cottage they found the princess lying still and silent, quite dead but still warm, and Conan bending over her trying to ascertain the cause of death and muttering something about corpses following him around.

"What happened?" cried Princess Ran, jumping down from the carriage.

"All I saw," said Conan, "was an old woman selling something to Aoko. And then she got on a broom and flew off."

"Aoko did?" asked Mitsuhiko, looking very impressed.

"No, stupid," said Genta, "the old woman."

"Nonsense," said Princess Sonoko. "What do you think this is, a fairy tale?"

"That's what I saw," said Conan.

"Now see here - " began Princess Sonoko.

"Oh, this is no time for quarreling!" said Princess Ran. "I'll go for a doctor. Sonoko, get that silly coffin out of the carriage so I can go faster. Ai, you come with me - you can hold the horses. The rest of you go get smelling salts and see if you can revive her. Come on, Ai!"

Off they galloped. As for the rest, they first put Princess Aoko's body in the coffin (this was Princess Sonoko's idea) and then they all ran about getting things they had heard were good for reviving people. All, that is, except for Conan, who knew a dead body when he saw one. Princess Sonoko tried pinching, and the other three children experimented with shouting in her ears in varying degrees of volume, and they had reached an unprecedented height - especially Ayumi - when they heard a gentle, discreet, would-you-please-hurry-up-and-turn-around-and-notice-me-because-I've-been-stading-here-for-ages sort of cough (I don't know how they heard it through all the racket they were making) and when they turned around there was Prince Kaito.

"Who are _you_?" said Princess Sonoko.

"I'm Prince Kaito," said Prince Kaito, and then, to Conan, "Sorry about barging in like this, but I need a little detective help, and I thought that since you - "

"COUGH," said Conan, pointedly, with a sideways look at Princess Sonoko.

" - Er, I mean, I thought that since you keep in touch with my brother - and I don't - at least, not at the moment - I thought I'd come and ask you, um, where he is, so he can help me with my detective problem," finished Prince Kaito, somewhat uncertainly.

"Can't you see we're busy?" demanded Princess Sonoko, rudely. "Our maid has just _died_, and you think you can just barge in here and ask for directions? And who says you're Prince Kaito, anyway? _I've_ never seen you before."

"That," said Prince Kaito, as politely as he possibly could under the circumstances, "is undoubtedly because we've never _met_, Princess; but I happen to be who I say I am, and I'm very sorry about your maid," this with a vague glance in the direction of the glass coffin, "but I'm in a great hu-- saints preserve us!"

"What?"

Prince Kaito waved an arm or so in an agitated manner. "That's Princess Aoko!"

"Well, and who else would it be?" snorted Princess Sonoko. "Wait - did you say _Princess_ Aoko?"

"What's she doing _here_? What happened to her?"

"An old woman put a spell on her," piped Conan.

"Nonsense!" said Sonoko, again.

"That witch!" siad Prince Kaito, wrathfully. (He meant the queen, of course.)

"Aoko's not a witch," protested little Ayumi.

"Now, look - " began Princess Sonoko.

"Hey," interrupted Prince Kaito (who was, no doubt, half out of his mind with worry about Princess Aoko at this point, and thus in no condition to make requests of people; at least, not with his usual tact and poise). "Give her to me."

Four pairs of incredulous eyes stared at him, and four mouths dropped open. One pair of eyes and one mouth worked together to make an extremely exasperated expression on Conan's face.

"_Give_ her to _you_?" asked Princess Sonoko at last.

"Yes, please," said Prince Kaito, politely.

Princess Sonoko exploded. "How dare you, you insensitive wretch! _Give_ her to you? Does she look like a piece of meat to you? Do I look like a butcher? What do you think this is, an auction? 'Give her to me' - I'll give it to you, you rogue! How dare you come and stick your ugly nose" (this was patently untrue; Prince Kaito had quite the nicest nose I'd ever seen) "in where it doesn't belong, and then you have the _gall_ to ask me to _give_ Aoko to you? Villain!"

Conan sighed.

"But if you let me have her I can - "

"'Let me have her'?" roared Princess Sonoko, in a tone more appropriate for a dragon than for a princess; "No! Over my dead body you'll have her! Aoko's a free woman, alive or dead, and _not_ for sale. 'Give her to me'! In this day and age! What would Susan B. Anthony say?"

"Who's Susan B. Anthony?" asked Ayumi.

"But the spell - " began Prince Kaito.

"Charlatan!" retorted Princess Sonoko.

"If you'd just let me explain - "

But the princess was in no mood for explanations. She crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes, and rebuffed him with two simple, stern words:

"Go away!"

And after this brilliant example of the kind of repartee that makes history, she would not listen to a word he said. Prince Kaito gave up within a minute of her final piece of witticism (and within two seconds of an almost imperceptible shake of the head that Conan gave him). He mounted his horse and rode off; and if he had not had a trick or two up his sleeve, that would have been the end of Princess Aoko, and it would have been the evil stepmother who lived happily ever after.

However, Prince Kaito _did_ have a trick up his sleeve - and it was quite a good one, at that. This trick was the result of his apprenticeship, which, you see, had not been under a lock-pick or a circus clown as the witch-queen had heard, but under the master Kaitou Kid, thief extraodinaire, who daylighted on the side as a master magician.

So presently a fantastic white figure came swooping over the trees on a white hang-glider, and by playing a very simple trick which involved a ball of yarn, a leaf, three marbles, and exactly half a loaf of bread (and also through the timely intervention of Conan's foot in a place where it would do the most good) Prince Kaito was able to steal away the body of Princess Aoko, coffin and all, and remove it to a clearing a little less than a mile away in a little more than five minutes.

Now you may wonder, as I often have, how it is that so many princes seem to have a knack for figuring out how to break a spell without the least amount of help. Oh, occasionally you'll read about one who has to go to the old woman and be told to go through such-and-such a forest and up such-and-such a mountain to such-and-such a castle, and to enter that castle and go to such-and-such a room and lift up one of the hearthstones and take such-and-such a weapon or magic cordial from the space underneath, with which to break the spell; but more often than not they seem to know by instinct where everything they need is and how they are supposed to use it once they get it. Oh, you did? Me, too! Well, anyway, I wondered and wondered about this, until finally I hit upon it:

Princes take lessons spell-breaking!

If you'll think about it, you'll see that this must be true. How else could they know how to do all those astonishing things if there is not, somewhere, a textbook or a dour old tutor which can provide a list of all forty-six thousand types of spells and all the various remedies for each one? And of course no prince's education would be complete without at the very least a course in elementary spell-breaking. It makes sense, doesn't it?

Prince Kaito had always been good at his lessons (though he was far from a model student, as he had an inordinate fondness for playing tricks upon his teachers which they did not always find as amusing as he did) so once he had taken off the cursed bandage and identified the kind of spell, he had only to administer the proper antidote. In this case, the proper antidote was one of the most common yet powerful remedies known to man: the Kiss of True Love.

And Princess Aoko's eyes opened.

It was a very romantic scene for about five seconds, but then, I regret to say, Princess Aoko gave Prince Kaito a resounding slap for his impudence. She was still rather muddled from being dead, you see. Anyway, after he had explained the circumstances to her, she apologized for acting without waiting for an explanation, and he apologized for doing something which had caused her distress, and apologies flew back and forth in a stilted, almost belligerent manner, until Conan (who had followed out of curiosity) broke in with an admonition for them to kiss and make up.

His choice of words was perhaps regrettable, but after Aoko had pulled his nose, Kaito picked him up, ruffled his hair affectionately, and introduced him as his older brother Prince Shinichi, "who," he said, "has the most astonishing talent for running afoul of magic-users and getting turned into things. But," cheerfully, "at least it isn't an insect this time."

"At least I don't run around kissing dead girls," grumbled Prince Shinichi.

"Shut up!" said Prince Kaito.

Princess Aoko's cheeks went rather pink.

Quite soon, however, they were able to look at each other without blushing, which was fortunate, since they had decided to get married the next week, and it would be difficult to marry someone if you couldn't look at them without turning a very interesting shade of red, don't you think?

They had a magnificent wedding, to which everyone was invited; even the witch-queen. She, however, was not able to attend, because she was having a bit of trouble getting her disguise off. (It was the spleen-of-frog that did it, in my opinion. Frogs can be awfully sticky.) The witch-queen was much better behaved after that, and she and her husband lived together for the rest of their lives in a fair amount of comfort and tranquility.

As for Prince Kaito and Princess Aoko, after the wedding they settled down within an hour's walk of Prince Shinichi's castle (so that when the spell wore off and he could marry Princess Ran the two friends would be close together) and began living happily ever after; and if they have not died, then I suppose they are living still.

**The End**

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**A/N**: Yay! Finished! And it didn't take me half as long as I'd expected. Most of the time I spent on it was getting it typed up - or trying to. I sometimes get a bit distracted. . Oh yes; I thought I'd mention this while I was thinking of it - I have a non-fanfiction story that I wrote around the same time as this one up on my livejournal, so if you want to see it, just go to my website and click on the tag "fiction (written)". 

My most common spelling mistake at the moment seems to be writing things like "eaten" and "beaten" as "eated" and "beated". I guess I should be happy I didn't make the tag "fiction (writed)". I kinda like the way "eated" sounds, though.

Thanks to sweety-1914, 30Kyu, s2lou, and katiesparks for reviewing! Cookies all around. n.n

Thanks for reading!


	6. Rapunzel

... I don't own Detective Conan, but I would like a pistol, please.

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**Rapunzel**

(CONTAINS: ECONOMICS, WEAPONS. DO NOT INGEST IF ALLERGIC.)

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**O**nce upon a time there was a queen who liked rapunzel; and when I say "liked" I mean really _liked_. I mean that she was obsessed with the stuff. I mean that if she did not get her regular dish of rapunzel every morning before breakfast she threw a hissy-fit which could be heard five kingdoms away, and which generally resulted in the poor king having to put in a large order for china and water-glasses before they could eat again.

Now when I say "poor king" I mean it two ways. I mean firstly as an expression of pity for his unfortunate state (though it was his own fault); I mean it secondly in a quite literal way. He did not have a lot of money, being lord and master of exactly sixty-point-three-five-nine miles of land which were populated by only seventy-three taxable persons. What money he did have he used to put in a bank account, but the week after he was married he sat down with a pencil and paper and did some sums several times, because he was an optimist and kept on hoping that he had somehow accidentally inserted five extra naughts into the estimated price of rapunzel for the queen per annum. He hadn't, though, so after he had done the sum for the fifteenth time and cried a bit, he raised taxes.

Now, this seemed like it would work out well, but it actually didn't. You see, rapunzel farmers in that kingdom were few and far between, because they all had to get ridiculously expensive licenses to grow or sell the stuff, owing to an unfortunate accident that had occurred several hundred years before. (It was a very sad incident, but I will only say that it involved a princess, a bowl of rapunzel, and a large family of middle-class caterpillars.) _Also_ there was a very complicated law which I won't even attempt to explain, but which prevented the importation of foreign rapunzel by anyone other than a bishop over seventy years of age who had not one single white hair, or a farmer with more than twenty children under the age of five years and six months, counting nine months of gestation.

(Please note that the above two complications are called "plot devices" and are only permissible when the author means it for a joke and the readers know he does; otherwise it is simply poor writing. A really good author can build a story from the ground up without using a single device except ink and paper, though I must say that it is much messier that way, and uses up much more paper than it would if they would sacrifice Art to Common Sense and use a pen or something.)

As I was saying, all was far from well, even considering the new taxes – or rather especially considering the new taxes; for ever so often a rapunzel farmer would consider the rising taxes, and the mortgage, and the prospective college educations of his nine children, and the new dress his wife wanted (or, alternately, the new dress she had bought herself on credit), and then he would double the price of his goods; and of course all the other rapunzel farmers would, too.

Whenever they raised the price, the king would look at his dwindling bank account and raise taxes; and then the farmers would raise their prices, and the king would raise taxes, and it went round and round and round _ad infinitum_, or very nearly, anyway. (The above is called a "vicious circle", and I strongly recommend never ever getting caught up in one. You shall see why.)

This is why: less than a year after the king was married, almost everyone in the country went bankrupt and moved away. This left the king, the queen, the Lord High Steward, a few seedy soldiers, the rapunzel farmers, a few assorted farmers, two cooks, and a witch who lived down the road inside a big wall and never paid any taxes, anyway.

The next to go was the Lord High Steward, who made off in the dead of night, inadvertently (I am sure) taking with him the queen's favorite china salad-bowl and the last bag of chips. Half a week later both cooks quit and moved away; they said they were tired of coming up with inventive ways of cooking rapunzel, and they weren't interested in receiving pay in the form of the king's autograph. Then the remaining farmers went on strike, and when the king sent the seedy soldiers to persuade them to behave, they beat the soldiers over their heads with brooms and pitchforks, and then packed up and left. All but one of the remaining rapunzel farmers didn't even have to do sums to figure that importing everything except rapunzel was going to be too expensive to sustain. They followed in the wake of the other farmers.

Two days after that the queen announced that she was pregnant.

Under different circumstances the king would have been overjoyed, but pregnancy brings with it cravings, and chocolate-covered sticks of dried rapunzel were so expensive that all he did was heave an uneasy sigh, create a new tax on digging in previously uncultured land, and put all the soldiers on halfpenny-pay. That night the very last rapunzel farmer packed up his family and his remaining goods, and snuck away.

The next morning all the people five kingdoms away had to wear earplugs. The poor king, however, had sold his last pair on eBay in an attempt to raise money to buy a cradle for the baby, and went temporarily deaf. The queen went temporarily insane and ordered the soldiers to go and get her some rapunzel from the witch's house, which she was convinced was stuffed to the beams with it. As the soldiers were bored, they shouldered their weapons and tramped off down the street.

An hour later they returned, whistling cheerfully, but also remarkably dirty, and devoid of any thing bearing any resemblance whatsoever to rapunzel. The queen fainted away in despair, but the king did not.

"What the devil have you been doing?" he demanded peevishly.

The oldest soldier tipped his hat to him respectfully. "Lookin' for rapunzel in the witch's house, sire."

"What's that? Speak up!" shouted the king, who had not heard a word. "Do I pay you to stand about lolly-gagging like idiots and – what's that all over your face?"

"Ashes, sire. See, sire," said the oldest soldier, apologetically, "we ain't sacked a buildin' in nigh on twenty years, and as the witch was out, we took the liberty of doin' a little pillagin' on our own count, as you might say, sire, if you please."

Of course the king still could not hear, so he was very displeased indeed; but this was nothing to the displeasure the witch exhibited when she swooped down into the courtyard on a broom five minutes later. She expressed her displeasure by turning all the soldiers into frogs, and then she settled down to expressing it to the king, who was very bewildered, but eventually (when his hearing had come back) grasped the idea that something was very, very wrong. This was about the time that he realized that he had traded his child and his kingdom for a lifetime supply of rapunzel for his wife.

By then there was nothing he could do about it, and so he and his wife lived with the witch for nine months until the baby was born. The ex-queen wanted to name him Alfred Ferdinand Washington Bertram Archibald Maximilius Harold the XXXVII after a very, very, very great-great-great-great-grand-ancestor, but the ex-king put his foot down and named the boy Gin, which he said was a very fine name for a fine little boy. But anyway it didn't matter, because the witch took the baby and kicked them out the next day, and _she_ called him Rapunzel.

The ex-king and his wife went away to another country, where he became a cobbler, and did not get into any more stories.

As for the witch, she took little Gin away and locked him up in her N0-G0 T0w3r(TM) by KeepsDrakes(TM), which in those days was the "in" tower for keeping princesses in. Of course Gin was not a princess, but princes have almost as difficult a time escaping a tower with no door and only one small window on the fifteenth floor as princesses do.

At first the witch used her broom to get up to the window, but by the time Gin was ten years old his hair was so long that she could just stand at the bottom and rhyme at him until he tossed it out of the window for her to climb up. (She was a very agile old witch.) This was rather painful until Gin got her to install a sort of hook on the windowsill so that he could loop his braid around it first and then throw it out.

Oh, and in case you're wondering why he had such long hair, it's because the witch was a dreadful combination of protective and suspicious. She never let him near anything sharp or pointy, because she was afraid that he would hurt himself, or her, or possibly both, like in a Greek play. (This is not a plot device; it is a fact. Everyone knows that witches are paranoid and over-protective.) He would occasionally get hold of a holly leaf (there was a large forest surrounding the tower) but the witch always took it away from him on her next visit.

Being a prince, Gin managed to grow up without being _too_ traumatized by all the repression, and by the time he was fifteen he was a very nice young man; only you couldn't really tell, what with all the hair, and he tended to be grumpy and was inclined to pull the wings off flies when he could catch them.

One day as he was sitting by the window calculating how long it would take for him to tunnel through the tower's six-foot stone walls using a cordless plastic hair-dryer and his fingernails (the answer is a very long time) when he saw a girl emerging from the forest into the clearing.

Gin knew about girls; he had read about them in books. They wore long skirts and had long hair and screamed when mice ran at them. This girl, however, was wearing pants; her hair was rather shorter than Gin's, by two or three miles at least; and instead of being run at she was the one who was running. She made a beeline for the tower and circled it, appearing disappointed to find that there was no door. Gin gathered that she was disappointed by some things she said about the architects and their ancestors.

As he was a prince, Gin decided to offer what assistance he could.

"There's no door," he called down, helpfully.

The girl did not appear to be impressed by this display of Christian charity. "Oh there isn't, is there?" she said, grimly.

"No," said Gin, "there isn't."

"Then how the blue blazes did _you_ get up there?" demanded the girl.

"By broom, I expect," said Gin, who had thought this out years before.

It was at this point that the girl seemed to lose interest in the conversation, which was a pity, as Gin had been rather enjoying it. Instead of answering she cast a nervous glance at the forest, as if she thought there might be a mouse in it, and then gyrated a bit in an agitated manner.

"Can I come up?" she called.

"Well," said Gin, thoughtfully, "I suppose so, but it might be difficult."

"Blast difficult!" said the girl.

"You see," said Gin, and began to explain about handholds and things, but she interrupted him impatiently.

"Never mind that!"

"What do you want up for?" asked Gin, curiously.

"Never mind that, either, just help me up!"

"But – " said Gin, thinking about the witch's many warnings about talking to strangers.

"Do you _mind_?" shrieked the girl. "Let me up there at once!"

And as she was in such a state, and as he was in a good mood, Gin let his hair down; and the girl, after giving it a look of dumbfounded inquiry, scrambled up its long, plaited length with the haste and skill of a woman who suspects that mice may presently begin coming out of forests and running at her. It was not done a moment too soon, either, for mere seconds after Gin had tidily collected his hair back into the tower a large company of horsemen cantered out of the forest and into the clearing.

The had evidently expected to find the girl there, for they milled about for several minutes looking for her and discussing possible explanations for her continued non-appearance, loudly and almost as colorfully as the girl had discussed the pedigree of the inventors of the N0-G0 T0w3r(TM). At last they decided that she must have given them the slip in the forest, and retreated to its murky depths in a ragged line.

It was about that time that Gin's fair guest rose from the floor (she had been rolling on it in an agony of mirth) and pointed at his hair in silent supplication.

"Oh," said Gin. "She won't let me near the scissors. She says I might hurt myself."

The girl collapsed again, and Gin waited patiently for her to recover. After five minutes she was well enough to inquire: "Why doesn't she cut it herself?"

"She says I might snatch them and hurt _her_," said Gin, "which I might," he added truthfully.

"Your mother?"

"No, the witch."

"What witch?"

"The one that's keeping me locked up in this t0w3r(TM)?" suggested Gin.

The girl considered this. "I thought witches only locked up princesses."

"I don't think she knew I wasn't a princess when she bought me," explained Gin.

"Oh," said the girl, and then said nothing in an awkward sort of way.

"Yes," said Gin.

After a moment the girl observed, "If this was exactly backwards – I mean, if you were a princess and I was a prince – then I could rescue you."

"But I'm not and you're not so you can't," said Gin, who was very practical about that sort of thing.

"H'm," said the girl, thoughtfully.

After that the silence stretched on in a stretchy, quiet way, until Gin finally broke it by asking again why the girl had wanted up into the tower.

At this she launched into a lengthy and verbose explanation, the gist of which I lay before you now. It seemed that the girl was Princess Vermouth of the kingdom next door, and that her father had recently married a stepmother who had turned out to be a witch who objected to pretty stepdaughters on principle (although what principle she objected to them on I'm sure _I_ don't know) and that the horsemen belonged to her stepmother and had been looking for the princess in order to do away with her.

"I can't think what Father married her for in the first place," said the princess unhappily. "She must have put a spell on him. She's hideous. And mean. And she always smells of vodka."

Gin gave a start. "Does she have a nose like a potato?"

"Yes, and posture like a _sack_ of potatoes, and – how did you know what her nose looked like."

"Because that's _my_ witch," explained Gin.

"Is she really?"

"Oh, yes."

"Then I expect I'd better be going," said the Princess Vermouth, and rose gracefully. "If you would be so kind..."

Gin, still being in a sort-of good mood, was so kind.

"By the way," called Princess Vermouth, when she had reached the bottom of the tower, "if you ever manage to get your hands on something sharp, you can just let yourself down by your hair and then cut it off at the bottom."

"Thank you," said Gin, dutifully, who had figured that out years before. Then he settled down as the princess trudged away through the forest, and began calculating how long it would take him to get rid of his hair by breaking it off one strand at a time. (The answer, for anyone interested, is that it does not take quite so long as digging through a six-foot stone wall with a hair-dryer, but still ranks among the top twenty on the List of Things Which Take a Ridiculously Long Time to Do.) It was very boring.

Two days after that, he was looking down out of the window again because the princess was standing at the bottom and calling again, and this time she was also waving something: something longish and dull grey and pointed and – oh, joy! – it looked as if it even had an edge capable of cutting things like flesh and bone and, most importantly, hair.

"I decided to rescue you anyway," she shouted, "so don't dawdle!"

Gin did not.

He clambered out of the window and shinnied down his own hair in less time than it takes me to tell you how quickly he did it. Then he took the sharp pointy object (it was a dirk, but the witch had censored all the dirks out of his books) and in one fell slash was rid of his hair. Or most of it, anyway. He left five or so feet to balance with, but even with that weight he felt dizzy and lightheaded. However, he overcame his euphoria in order to ask about the sharp pointy thing.

"What _is_ this?" he asked.

(Neither of them noticed a witch-shaped speck swooshing towards them above the forest in a meaningful sort of way).

"It's a dirk," said Princess Vermouth. "It's my father's. I had to borrow it from him because I didn't have any knives. I like these better."

She pulled something from a fold of one of her garments. Now, these instruments are very hard to describe, but I'll do my best. It was mostly a rectangular metal bit and another rectangular metal bit that mushroomed a bit near the bottom; one end of the rectangular bit was attached to the top end of the mushroom bit so that it was almost perpendicular to it; there were several little spiky bits sticking out near the join, and also there was an odd little piece of curved metal projecting from the side of the rectangular bit that was closest to the mushroom bit, and another curved piece of metal joined at one end to the rectangular bit and at the other to the mushroom bit, so that it enclosed the smaller curved bit.

"What's _this_?" said Gin, puzzled, and took it into his hands to examine it.

"It's a – good Lord, don't put your finger in there!" (Gin had discovered that the rectangular bit was hollow.) "Don't point it at your face! No, don't point it at my face, either! Here, just give it back."

"But – " said Gin, and held it out reluctantly; the princess put her hands on it fumblingly, and the thing promptly bucked like a spurred horse and made a noise like this:

_BLAM!_

(Neither of them noticed the witch-shaped speck dropping from the sky in the manner of a witch who has just been shot with a 9 mm. pistol.)

"...And don't press on that," said Princess Vermouth, belatedly, and shaking her head, as if that would somehow help the ringing in her ears. "Haven't you ever seen a gun before?"

But Gin was staring at the thing with a glint in his eyes (if he had been looking at the princess instead I would have called it the light of love) and all _he_ said was:

"Can I have one?"

"Not without a license you can't," said Princess Vermouth firmly. "But suppose you come back to the castle with me and be my bodyguard – after you get your license, I mean."

"All right," said Gin, who would have said "all right" if she had demanded that he climb to the top of Mount Everest and back in one day after talking with the tooth fairy about her stingy ways.

He became a master marksman after exactly two weeks' worth of training, and was the princess' bodyguard for several years, until it became apparent that her stepmother was not coming back. (No one ever found out what had become of her.) Then he left the kingdom and took up with the Assassins' Guild. This is not generally considered the kind of genteel trade that a prince, if he must learn a trade, should learn; but we will blame it on his parents and the witch and their poor parenting skills, and rejoice that at least he was doing something interesting.

We will also hope that he lived happily ever after. I'm sure _I_ don't know if he did.

**The End**

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**A/N**: I started out writing this with Gin and Sherry, then changed it to Gin and Vermouth, then wondered if it oughtn't be Genta or Mitsuhiko and Ayumi or something like that, and eventually stopped second-guessing myself and stuck with this one because the idea of Gin locked up in a tower with all that hair is simply a lot more funny than the idea of Mitsuhiko or Genta in the same situation. 

Thanks for the reviews! Happy New Year!


	7. Goldilocks and the Three Bears

I don't own Sonoko or any criminals. They cost too much.

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**Goldilocks and the Three Bears**

(Made from One Hundred Percent Recycled Material.)

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**O**nce upon a time there was a curious little girl named Sonoko, and if you know what "curious" means when it's in the same sentence as a word or phrase like "little girl" then I expect you know where this story is going already. However, in case you don't, I'll go ahead and tell it to you.

Curious children are not exactly a rare breed, but wherever they go they cause confusion and consternation. An adult, you see, is bound by social conventions and the like, whereas children have not quite finished evolving their sense of when-it-is-not-a-good-time-to-ask-a-question, and will ignore even such broad hints as a hissed "shut up!" or a smack on the leg. A curious child will ask the most astonishing question in what we certainly hope is innocence; and, furthermore, if he is not answered instantly, he will go on asking, and sometimes he will increase the volume of his speech each successive time, on the off chance that the adult at which the question was directed simply did not hear the first fifty-three times. Curious children (and this is very curious) almost always (and hopefully inadvertently) choose crowded, quiet places to ask their questions. Churches and classy restaurants are two most often picked for their questions:

"Mommy, why is that lady so fat?"

"How come there's no good food here?"

"Hey, didn't she have any money to buy nice clothes with?"

"Look at that nose like a banana! Isn't that nose like a banana, Daddy?"

...Et cetera. Probably it's the parents' fault in the first place, but even if it is, they more than make up for it with constant blushing. (And people talk about the blood of the martyrs!)

However, to return to the story: once upon a time there was a curious little girl named Sonoko, and once upon a time Sonoko was looking down from a window into the alley behind her house and saw a man dragging another man through it by his heels. Of course she couldn't keep quiet.

"Hey!" she said. "Is that a _corpus_?"

"Gah!" said the man, dropping the corpse. "No, little girl, it isn't, it's a dummy. Come and see."

Silly, curious Sonoko went to have a look, and of course the man chloroformed her. You mustn't blame him; it was in his _Criminal's Handbook of Rules_ (Article II, Section 4a: all witnesses of a crime or evidence of a crime must be chloroformed ASAP and dragged off to the nearest available Coal-Cellar of Evil) and as he was a novice he always went exactly by the book.

When she woke up, she was in a dimly lit room with no furniture, but plenty of rats and coal dust. She correctly identified it as a Lair, and she correctly identified the sounds coming from three people in a corner as an Argument.

"It says it right here in the Book," the man who had chloroformed her was saying. (His name is Vodka, so we will call him that from now on.) "Cement shoes – or an iron coffin – and drop them in Tokyo Bay. Very tidy. Very clean."

"But she's just a baby," said the second person. She was one of the many Female Criminals you find hanging around with Male ones for apparently no reason. (You can pick your preferred type from a list and apply it to her. _I_ thought she was rather nondescript.)

"At the very least a more sophisticated approach is called for," said the third person. "We could always demand a ransom first and _then_ sink her in the bay."

"Gin!" said the nondescript female criminal, reproachfully.

"It says it right here," began Vodka again, but Sonoko interrupted him.

"Hey!" she said. "Are you _harbored criminals_?"

"Gah!" said Vodka, again. "No, we're not. We're – we're hatchet men. We make hatchets," he added.

"Nuh uh," said Sonoko. "Hatchet men are murderers and assassins and hit men and, and, butchers. That's what you are."

"Where'd she learn all that?" said the nondescript female, faintly.

"Thesaurus," said Sonoko primly.

"Well now," said Gin. "She's kind of cute, isn't she? I'd almost like to keep her."

"I won't," said Sonoko, decisively. "You're ugly and you stink. Cigarettes are bad for your health. I'm going to get lung cancer from all your second-hand smoke."

Gin retired with an air of insulted dignity. The nondescript criminal said (still faintly), "Would lovey-ducky like a sandwich, then?"

"I'm not a ducky," retorted Sonoko, "and I want _caviar_."

So the female cooked her a grilled-cheese sandwich. This was not out of malice aforethought; it was just that it was all they had besides sardines, and neither of the men wanted to leave because Vodka thought he had seen a policeman-shaped shadow sidling along the ground outside.

It was quite a nice sandwich, but Sonoko threw it on the floor.

"Caviaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar," she said, with rising inflection.

"Shut up. We don't _have_ any caviar," said Gin.

Sonoko was horrified. "This," she said, "is a Den of Inquistiny." And then, as an idea struck her, she began experimentally to scream. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," said Sonoko.

Vodka said something rude and went out. When he came back an hour later with the caviar, Sonoko was still going "eeeeeee" with occasional breaks for breath, and the female and Gin were in a corner together looking harassed, and not in the least dignified. (This was mostly because of the bits of cotton balls sticking out of their ears.)

While Sonoko considered her caviar, they all three retreated to a window and peeked out at the police car parked across the street. The nondescript female muttered something about an iron coffin, and Gin smoked the wrong end of his cigarette. They had just gotten settled down to a good game of poker when a shuffling sound at the other end of the Lair announced that Sonoko was standing up.

"This floor is nasty," she said, in a threateningly plaintive voice. "I want a chair. And a table."

So Gin and Vodka spent an hour hammering bits of wood together into a chair (they turned the refrigerator on its side for a table), and the female kept watch at the window. She counted five more cars of policemen before the table and chair were finished. She counted another two while Gin and Vodka ripped their trench-coats up to make a tablecloth for the table and a cushion for the chair.

"I think we're in for it," she whispered to them when they rejoined her, and they all looked grimly at the policemen and fingered their firearms, and tried to ignore the muffled sniffs Sonoko kept giving in order to remind them who exactly was in charge.

They spent the next fifteen minutes watching more policemen arrive, making a doll for Sonoko out of a lump of coal, a handkerchief, and some of Gin's hair, whispering conspiratorially, making a bed for the doll out of Vodka's hat and one of the female criminal's sleeves, and watching more police cars drive into the adjacent parking-lot. There were more than ten cars by then, and most of them had disgorged two or more policemen, who milled about looking grave and noble. There were also a few dogs, which milled about looking hungry and noble.

The situation was undoubtedly serious when at last one of the most grave and noble policemen came forward bearing a megaphone, and began bawling gravely through it in the direction of the coal-chute.

"Put your hands in the air," he boomed, "and come out..."

"Oh, dear," said the female.

"In light of our circumstances – " began Gin.

"The Book," said Vodka tersely, "says that under no circumstances is surrender to be..."

There was a shuffling noise behind them, and all three froze. From the depths of the coal-cellar came Sonoko's shrill, imperious voice:

"_I want_ – "

But what Sonoko wanted we may never know, because the three criminals chose that moment to defenestrate themselves. It was a very small window, and as it was in a basement it necessitated throwing one's self _up _rather than _out_, but they all three managed it as if they had been doing it for years. (Perhaps they had been, but we'll never know that, either.) They hurled themselves desperately into the waiting arms of the policemen, and were summarily handcuffed and led off to jail. The female criminal was in hysterics most of the time, but she was in them in a decidedly relieved way.

It took the policemen almost an hour to persuade Sonoko to come out of the coal-cellar, and when they finally did, she got passed around from car to car very quickly until a nanny came to take her back home. She was soundly spanked for associating with the masses, and also for being too inquisitive by half, and tearing her pinafore. She became a Reformed Character and lived happily ever after.

**The End**

* * *

**A/N**: Somehow Sonoko was the only fit for a story like this. (Sorry, Sonoko.) I imagine she was a very precocious child, but I'm not sure about the curiosity. 

Thanks go to all my reviewers: randombutterflies, AVAAntares, Animefangirl2007, RanMouri82, katiesparks, Rosienessness, 30Kyu, Rani07, Lluvia-the-Wolfgirl, PunkDetectiveGeek6, s2lou, sweety-1914, Marq Fyori-Josdyas Auricor (the story about the shrunken Prince Shinichi is currently attempting to take form in my mind, by the way), kchan7853, and aPeurDeFISH1412. There's nothing cheerier than opening my inbox and seeing an email beginning "FF Review Alert" sitting there waiting for me to open it. :-)


	8. The Bird 'Grip'

It is with great regret that I announce that no, I do _not_ own a single one of Gosho Aoyama's stories. This is the one sorrow in my otherwise enjoyable life.

* * *

**The Bird 'Grip'**

(More or Less Mutilated.)

* * *

**O**nce upon a time there was a kingdom with a problem, and also a prince, by which I mean to say that the kingdom had a prince _and_ a problem, and that the prince also had a problem. 

The kingdom's problem had to do with magic; or, more specifically, with magicians, and which comes in two parts. The first part is this: every single adept in the kingdom was a specialist, which meant that each and every one of them had only one spell which they could cast _and_ reverse. A few very good ones had other spells which they could only cast, and there were one or two very powerful witches who could reverse almost every spell.

The second part of the problem was that all the kingdoms within two hundred miles had exactly the same problem. This meant that if a witch happened to turn one into a Crumple-Horned Snorkack for a lark, then one had a jolly good chance of staying a Crumple-Horned Snorkack until the witch was done larking, or until one had gathered up enough gold to pay a reversal specialist. As most people were not able to afford a whole cottage-full of gold, and as witches were notorious for forgetting what exactly they'd been doing while they were larking, the above is as much as to say "forever".

The prince's problem was that adepts kept on turning him into things.

I _think_ (though I am not sure) that this was because his fairy godmother mumbled at his christening. (He was christened Shinichi, by the way.) She was the only christening fairy within three hundred miles of anywhere, you see, and she was a bit overworked. Anyway, no one liked to say that she must have said the wrong thing and Gifted him with the ability to be turned into something by every adept who saw him, so it was generally assumed that the Gift had granted him the ability to grow hair on his head or something.

(I have to digress a bit here – his younger twin brother, Prince Kaito, was more lucky, and was only Given the ability to pick any lock without half trying. The worst problem that this Gift gave him was that if he actually _was_ trying to pick a lock he couldn't, so that he had to sidle up to it obliquely, metaphorically speaking, and pick it without letting his conscious know that he was doing it on purpose.

His parents ignored his gift, because it wasn't a proper sort of gift for a prince to have, so when he was eight Prince Kaito picked his way into the castle dungeons and apprenticed himself to the master thief, Kaitou Kid, who had taken residence there on purpose, because he was tired of people chasing him. He was very lucky, and finished his apprenticeship after only four years.)

Prince Shinichi wasn't lucky at all.

On his first birthday a friendly fairy turned him into a rock, "to keep him from wiggling away from his nurse like that". She thought she was being helpful. I'm not exactly sure what the nurse thought, but anyway she screamed a lot, and the Queen fainted. The fairy wouldn't turn him back into a baby until the King explained that the birthday party was in five minutes, and that his people would think he had gone mad if he showed them a rock and wanted them to sing "Happy Birthday" to it.

When Prince Shinichi was five his parents took him and his brother to the seaside for a holiday. He fell off a bit of a rock into one of those rock pools that are always under the cliffs, and while he was splashing happily in exactly five inches of water his mother fainted and a passing adept turned him into a fish to keep him from drowning. Of course he found where the water was getting into the pool and swam out to sea, and his father had to hire a djinn to get the water out of the ocean, and another to wade through all the fishes and find the one with a gold circle on its head and get it back to the fairy.

A few years after that a witch who was passing through the kingdom happened to see the Prince climbing a tree, and turned him into an apple on a whim. The under-gardener nearly ate him, and the Queen fainted. The King had to pay the witch four times her weight in gold before she would restore Prince Shinichi to his proper form and go away.

The year after _that_ the Queen fainted, and the Queen's maid turned him into a feather. She was going to burn him under his mother's nose, but his father objected (he said that burning incense was all very well, but that he hardly thought his wife would appreciate her son being burned in her honor) and they had to find another adept to turn him into a bottle of smelling-salts.

Mind you, these are only a few examples of the things that happened to Prince Shinichi. You will have a better idea of what kind of life he led when I tell you that by his seventeenth birthday he had been turned into a baby's rattle, a pair of scissors, a cat, a grasshopper, a small dragon, an extinct fly, a cheesecake, a goldfish, a pair of gold-embroidered dancing slippers, an ant, a magnifying glass, an amoeba, a lampshade, a butterfly, an incomplete oil painting, an armadillo, a doorknob, a castle, a mouse, a jar of pickled prunes, a centipede, a top hat, a zebra, a koala bear, a first-edition copy of _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_, a magpie, an avocado, a frog, a soup-tureen, a fox, a poet, a set of half-used pastels, an antelope, a moth, a lizard, a small island, an elephant, a squirrel, a rose-bush, a screw-driver, a pig, a dirk, an orangutan, and a typewriter.

I may have forgotten a few things.

As you can no doubt imagine, his family very quickly got fed up to the royal teeth with this state of things. The Prince took up detecting as a hobby to keep his mind off it, and got quite good at it, but this was no solace at all to his mother, who took to fainting every time she saw an adept, so as to save time.

Anyway, after he had been turned back from an egg-beater to a boy (that was around the time he was fourteen) his father called a meeting about it. The Queen said it made her feel faint, and Prince Kaito said that it was unsettling to be related to a pickled prune. The King and Prince Shinichi exchanged eloquent glances, and the upshot of it all was that the King sent one of his most clever knights to steal a magical artifact from a very powerful witch who lived about four miles down the road. The artifact was a stone called Pandora, which was said to occasionally bleed a liquid which was capable of reversing any enchantment.

After the knight left they waited a year, in case he was being delayed by traffic, and then sent another, cleverer knight in his wake. They were going to wait two years for that one, to allow for inclement weather, but Prince Shinichi's seventeenth birthday arrived barely a year later and precipitated a – a – an _incident _which, for lack of a more expressive word, I will label as a "crisis".

This was entirely the fault of societal norms. In those days it was protocol to invite every single adept within four hundred miles to any parties, and, adepts being adepts, it was considered wise for royalty to meet them personally and welcome them to the party. This meant that Prince Shinichi spent most of his birthday standing at the door to welcome the guests, and being turned into things and back every twentieth adept. (It would have been more often, but his Gift had apparently included the ability to become immune to a spell after it had been used on him twenty-seven times _or _if he had happened to sneeze at the exact same time that the spell was being cast.) And _that_ meant that he had to spend all that time trying _very_ hard _not_ to look patient, because a good prince never lets on when he's having to exercise patience.

It was very tiring.

It was so tiring, as a matter of fact, that Prince Shinichi began actually to _look_ tired. Then a fairy he was greeting remarked brightly that he looked simply adorable, "like a sleepy child!" and the sorcerer behind her decided to turn him into a seven-year-old for a lark – and then remembered that he'd left the stove on at home and vanished. And _then _it turned out that he was from the other side of the world and that no one knew his name or address.

The Queen fainted.

While the King was making sure that no one turned his son into a fan or a cup of water, Prince Shinichi and Prince Kaito exchanged glances, and the upshot of _that_ was that Prince Kaito disappeared from the crowd, and later someone reported having seen the Kaitou Kid going down the street in the direction of a certain witch's house.

If the King knew what his second son was doing, he didn't say anything, but when two days had passed, and neither the sorcerer nor Prince Kaito had put in an appearance, he began to look worried; and when it had been a week, Prince Shinichi threw in a metaphorical towel, saddled a pony, and set off to get his brother back himself. (And maybe Pandora into the bargain.)

Unfortunately, he took a wrong turn somewhere. You see, those were the days when most kingdoms were a mile or two square, at the most, and it was very easy to set out for the kingdom next door and miss it because you'd happened to look in exactly the wrong direction for exactly the wrong five minutes; and you'd wind up four kingdoms down and one over from where you'd meant to be without any idea of how or where you'd gone wrong. And that is _exactly_ what happened to Prince Shinichi. When night fell, he was in a town he'd never seen before, in a kingdom he'd never heard of, and he was beginning to suspect that the road was bewitched to send people off in the wrong direction. (He thought that this was perhaps what had happened to his brother and the two knights.)

Also his seven-year-old body was acting up on him. He wanted a glass of milk and a bed, and he wanted them _immediately_. So he put up at an inn and got both, but just as he was getting to sleep, something threw the door of his room open and dived under the bed. Before the Prince had quite grasped what was going on, the door burst open again and the innkeeper stormed in, waving a poker in an aggressive manner.

"Where'd he go?" he roared.

"Er – " said Prince Shinichi; and then, recollecting that the something had looked white and person-shaped: "Umm ... he went _that_way."

"Arr!" said the innkeeper, and dashed off in _that_ direction.

Once the door had closed, the something crawled out from under the bed and adjusted its top hat and monocle. "Well," said Kaitou Kid, "_that_ was close."

"What are you doing here?" demanded Prince Shinichi.

"Rescuing you?" suggested Kid. (He did not sound very sure about it.)

"_I_ just rescued _you_," pointed out Prince Shinichi. "Weren't you going to go get Pandora?"

"Well, yes," said Kid, "but, er ... you see..."

"She caught you, didn't she?"

"Yes," admitted Kid, dismally. "And she put a spell on me. Everything I put on changes into this outfit, and," said Kaitou Kid, "while I've no objection to nattiness, as such, I _would_ sometimes like to be able to get through town without a bajillion people screaming '_Kaitou Kiddo da!_" and chasing me all over everywhere with pitchforks. Or pokers," said Kid, "but since you're here, I can help _you_ steal Pandora."

"Oh no you can't," said Prince Shinichi. "I'm a detective, not a thief."

"It's technically not stealing," said Kid, "since her grandmother stole it from an ancestor of ours. Legally we're simply recovering stolen property."

"But physically I'm going in there and taking something she wants to keep," retorted Prince Shinichi.

"Don't be a chicken!"

"I'm not a chicken, I'm a seven-year-old – or have you forgotten?"

"But it's easy!"

"Then _you_ do it," said Prince Shinichi.

"I can't," said Kid patiently. "She put up a barrier to keep me out right after I left. I felt it. And anyway, all you have to do is follow my instructions, and you'll be in and out in no time."

"Like you were?" muttered the Prince; but his younger brother ignored him cheerfully, and the next morning they set out for the witch's house together, and got there right after lunch. Kaitou Kid said she'd be taking a nap, and all Prince Shinichi had to do was nip in, grab the stone, put it into a plain wooden jewel-case that would be near it, and nip out again.

"And," said Kid, "you are _not_ to put it in the gold case. Don't even touch it."

"Why not?" asked Prince Shinichi.

Kid sighed. "This is a fairy tale, remember? You don't _get_ any reasons – just don't do it. And if you get caught by the witch, agree to the second bargain she suggests to you."

"What? Why?"

But Kaitou Kid merely vanished in a puff of pink smoke, and Prince Shinichi shrugged and went on into the witch's house.

There was Pandora, set in plain view, and there, to one side of it, was the plain wooden box, but –

It was so _very_ plain. It was unfinished and unlined and blocky in shape; the edges were worn, and the little nails that held it together were rusted. One of the hinges was mysteriously absent, and the other looked on the point of snapping, and there were a number of magenta blotches on the lid.

On the other hand, the golden jewel-case was both clean and pretty. The lid was crusted with semi-precious stones set in a clever swirling pattern, and the inside was lined with velvet. It glinted. It sparkled. It was _shiny_.

It was also apparently booby-trapped, because there was a sort of shriek and a sort of crash when Prince Shinichi picked it up, and then a witch with her hair up in curlers came shooting into the room. The Prince was so surprised at first that he remained rooted to the spot, and afterwards he remained rooted to it because the floorboards wrapped themselves around his ankles and held him there.

"Child," droned the witch, ominously, and then paused. "Hullo!" she added, with less menace and more interest. "You're not a child at all, are you? What are you doing here?"

"I _was_ stealing Pandora," said Prince Shinichi, truthfully, "but you've interrupted me."

"Oho," said the witch. "So that's what Kid was after it for. Brothers, are you? Well, well, well."

Prince Shinichi did not look cross or patient.

The witch considered him for a moment, then smiled brightly. "See here, I _am_ a witch, so I can't _give_ it to you, but I'll make a bargain with you." She held up three fingers. "You can let me test a new spell on you – and I'll give you Pandora if you survive. Or you can go and get me something I want – and I'll give you Pandora when you bring it to me. Or you can stay here and help around the house for a year – and I'll give you Pandora at the end of the year if you've completed all the tasks I set you."

"The second, please," said Prince Shinichi politely.

"Wise choice," said the witch, grinning. "Right, then. It's a princess I want. Not to eat or anything," she added, at the look on the prince's face. "She's been kidnapped by ogres, and her father's offering a reward, so I thought – not the usual kind of reward," she added, at the other look on the prince's face. "Just money. Anyway, she's in their den. It's only a few miles away, you can't miss it, down the road for about two minutes until you get to the briar thicket, left at the third fork after the thicket, right at the dead oak, go on until you see a crumbly tower and take the road that goes _away_ from it, and you're practically there."

She beamed.

Prince Shinichi looked at her.

"Well?" said the witch.

"Can I have a map, please?"

I will spare you the details of how unmercifully Kaitou Kid teased his older brother as they made their way to the ogres' den. Let it suffice to say that, by the time they reached the den (it took longer than it should have until they realized that they were looking at the map upside-down), Prince Shinichi had gotten to the point where he actually looked slightly cross.

"Now," said Kid, when they had found the door, "when you go in – "

"You aren't coming?"

Kaitou Kid chuckled. "No. I bought have a portable sleeping spell with me, but to work it I need to be _outside_ the field it generates – and don't ask if you can do it; we all know you have less magical ability than a grain of rice. Just go in, get the princess, and don't – "

"Put her in the gold box?" suggested Prince Shinichi.

"Actually, this time the stipulation is that you don't kiss her," grinned Kid.

"What would I want to go and do that for?" demanded Prince Shinichi, crossly. "I don't even know her!"

But Kaitou Kid only grinned and said, "It's the second thing again."

Of course, Prince Shinichi fully intended to take his brother's advice this time (although he didn't quite see why he'd felt the need to warn him off a girl he'd never even seen), and he strode into the den filled with purpose, but – there was the princess, lying peacefully with her dark hair spread around her, trailing over her oval face: over delicate eyebrows, over long dark eyelashes resting on smooth, pink cheeks; and her lips were curved in a gentle half-smile...

So presently the prince found himself as the chief witness and defendant in an impromptu trial, which was judged, juried, lawyered, witnessed, and spectatored by about a dozen sleepy, puzzled ogres in pajamas. The princess was there, too, but she stood near the back of the room, and when she looked at Prince Shinichi it was with the mildly bewildered gaze of a woman who knows that a child is in love with her and is not at all sure what she is supposed to do about it.

Prince Shinichi was very busy looking at the princess (he gather from an ogre that her name was Ran) for most of the trial, and said "yes" to more or less everything that the ogres asked him; and when all the evidence and everything had been summed up, he was somewhat surprised to find that he had admitted to being a famous thief, said that he had snuck into the den a week before in a delivery of fine-ground flour, and claimed that his objective had been the chief ogre's favorite purple bathrobe.

Fortunately the chief ogre was very understanding, and proposed to let the prisoner choose his own fate: he could be eaten, or be set a task, or die painfully, according to his preference.

"The second, please," said Prince Shinichi, without really attending properly, and was sent off with a metaphorical flea in his ear, and instructions to steal the princess' father's car, for which they would trade the princess.

Kaitou Kid laughed for a long time.

"Now," he said, when they had reached the other kingdom, "it's the middle of the night, so everyone's asleep. Go into the garage, get the car, and come out. The keys will be on a rack near the door – _don't_ use the gold one."

"Yes," said Prince Shinichi, absently, and then went and did exactly as he had been told. He didn't even _look_ at the gold key. (I think that perhaps he had something else on his mind.)

Apparently Kaitou Kid thought so, too, because when his older brother drove up in the car (nearly running over him in the process) his eyebrows went up, and on the way back to the ogres' den he stared a lot, and eventually said casually, "So what's her name?"

"Ran," said Prince Shinichi. "Isn't it – hey!"

"Hey what?"

"How did you know?"

Kaitou Kid looked thoughtful. "Well, it was either the sluggish movements, the vacant stare, the fact that you actually did what I told you to do without so much as asking 'why?', the heart-rending sighs, or the way you keep on getting your eyes crossed and having to think before you can uncross them – watch it! That dagger's _sharp_, you know."

"Of course I know," said Prince Shinichi crossly. "That's the point. And I'll have you know this isn't funny."

"Yes it is."

"No, it's not! I can't court her as a seven-year-old, and I can't not _be_ a seven-year-old unless I get Pandora – and I just stole her father's car! And I am _not_ going to give her to that witch."

"She's just going to ransom her," said Kaitou Kid, with amusement in his voice.

"She _says_ she's just going to ransom her," corrected the prince.

"It amounts to the same thing."

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does."

"It doesn't!"

"It does!"

They were still – er – _discussing_ the subject of whether or not a witch's word was to be taken at face value when they arrived at the ogres' den. Ogres are deep sleepers, fortunately, but their voices woke the princess and she came outside to see what was going on. For a moment it looked as if a passing adept had turned Prince Shinichi's head into a beetroot, but he recovered quickly and said, brightly:

"We've come to rescue you, princess!"

"Oh!" said Princess Ran, a little mystified at this unorthodox method of retrieval. "Thank you very much, then. But aren't you going to trade in the car?"

"What for?" said Kaitou Kid. "The ogres aren't exactly looking."

The princess said doubtfully that she wasn't sure it was protocol to do such a thing, and it sounded a little like stealing.

Prince Shinichi winced, but Kid grinned. "Well, they stole you first. Anyway, the kid here" (Prince Shinichi very determinedly did not glare) "is worried about you, so he's going to drive you back to your parents' place. I'll meet you at the witch's house some time tomorrow, okay, niichan?"

With which he left them in another burst of pink smoke.

In the blank silence which followed his departure, Princess Ran said, with desperate politeness, "You and your, er, younger brother look very alike."

Of course this did not help at all.

I will pass lightly over the trip back to Princess Ran's kingdom, because it was very, very awkward, and involved a lot of the princess being infuriatingly kind to Prince Shinichi, and a lot of Prince Shinichi _not_ looking heartbroken, or angry, or embarrassed. I will say only a little of the princess' welcome home, which involved a lot of hugging and crying. Her mother called the prince a "little hero", her older sister patted him on the head, and her father regarded him with the deepest suspicion; Prince Shinichi was not sure which was worse. They gave him a glass of milk and a cookie and put him to bed in the guest-bedroom, which he promptly vacated via the window, so as to avoid being given any rewards.

All in all, Prince Shinichi was almost glad to see his younger brother again when he found him the next day, and greeted him quite genially. If Kaitou Kid was pleased to Prince Shinichi, he did a very good job of concealing it; he didn't even say "hello", but simply rounded on him and said:

"Oh, _there_ you are! I need you to do something for me."

"It's nice to see you, too," said Prince Shinichi politely. "What is it?"

Kaitou Kid produced a gleaming needle from somewhere in his fantastic costume. "I need you to prick my finger with this."

There was a sort of meaningful silence while Prince Shinichi stared suspiciously up at his little brother. Then:

"Prick you?" said Prince Shinichi.

"Yes," said Kid.

"With a needle?" said Prince Shinichi.

"Yes," said Kid.

"I don't like the sound of that," said Prince Shinichi, after another meaningful of silence. "Are you sure?"

"Oh, for the love of turtle soup!" said Kid, dancing a bit. "_Yes_. I want _you_ to prick _me_ with a _needle_. Stop dawdling and get on with it!"

Prince Shinichi said, mulishly, "You _do_ know that nothing good ever comes of pricking people with things, don't you?"

"That's only princesses," explained Kaitou Kid, "and if you don't do it _right now_, I am going to turn you over my knee and spank you, older brother or no."

Perhaps it was this threat that caused Prince Shinichi to jab (it was actually more of a stab) his beloved little brother so very enthusiastically, but we will give him the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, after Kaitou Kid vanished with a yelp and an explosion of pink smoke, and reappeared as Prince Kaito, dressed in a neat outfit which practically screamed "incognito", the two brothers had a friendly tussle, Prince Shinichi went on to the witch's house. Prince Kaito followed him at a cautious distance, in case of accidents.

When the witch (whose hair was still in curlers) answered the door, Prince Shinichi explained politely that at the princess' house was on the way back to the witch's, he'd taken the liberty of dropping her off there himself. He said the witch could have the pony if she wanted, though.

The witch squinted at him and said resignedly, "Took the scenic route, did you? Well, I might have known. Put the pony in the drawer, there's a good boy. Oh," she added, "and you get points for trying."

She twiddled her fingers at him, and there was a flash and a bang and a great deal of foul-smelling smoke, and when the prince had stopped coughing and was able to take interest in the world again, he was astonished to discover that he was his proper height, and possessed the number of organs, apertures, and appendages which it is normal for a human being to possess, _and_ that he was not covered in fur, feathers, scales, an exoskeleton, metal, plastic, slime, or any combination of the above.

It muddled him rather.

However, he managed to thank her and get the pony into the drawer (although he was never sure afterwards how exactly he managed the latter) and then he tottered down the road to rejoin his brother, who was very glad to see him again.

Only two more things happened to them on the way home: first, the witch came running after them and shoved a note into Prince Shinichi's pocket; second, they discovered that the King's two cleverest knights had been unavoidably detained at an alehouse approximately halfway between the castle and the witch's house.

They took them back to the castle to be court-martialed, and while Prince Shinichi was signing the necessary fourteen pounds of paperwork, Prince Kaito took the King aside and divulged certain information to him. The result of the information was that the next week the King informed Prince Shinichi that he'd been trying to whip up an alliance with a certain King Kogoro for a while, and that negotiations had now formally opened. In those days of course that meant that they had matched up two of their children and wanted to see if they got along before signing any treaties. So Prince Shinichi was rather dazedly packed off with instructions to court Princess Ran.

As it happened, they got along rather well, once Prince Shinichi had explained how he had managed to age ten years in a week. They got engaged the very next day, because it wasn't considered socially acceptable to get engaged to someone five minutes into your acquaintance with them, and everybody was very pleased.

They had been engaged for less than a month when, as they were walking together in Princess Ran's garden, a certain sorcerer from the other side of the world flew past and happened to look down.

"Ha!" he said to himself. "Why, that's that sleepy young man, what's his name. Young. Ha, ha," chuckled the sorcerer, and twiddled his fingers.

Princess Ran looked down at her betrothed, and said, with mild concern, "You've gone short again, Shinichi; did you know?"

"Oh, _bother_!" said Prince Shinichi.

But I promise that they did live happily ever after (eventually).

**The End**

* * *

**A/N**: And that is (at least part of) the story of the shrunken Prince Shinichi. I hope y'all enjoyed it. 

Oh, and I'm working on a non-fanfiction version of _The Bird 'Grip'_, in collaboration with my original plot-bunny, and that's the version that I'll publish for real (if I ever do publish anything for real). I've got non-fanfiction ideas for most of the other fairy tales I've done in my head already; Goldilocks, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel just need a little work... Anyway, I don't know what the next fractured fairy tale will be – I'm going to concentrate on finishing chapter six of _The Empty House_. (Anyway now I _know_ that six is an unlucky number. Blast the thing!) Thanks for all your support!

And oh yeah. There really is a fairy tale called _The Bird 'Grip'_; it's in Andew Lang's Pink Fairy Book. (Don't ask me why anyone would name a bird "Grip" because I really have no idea.) There's also one called "The Golden Blackbird" (bit of an oxymoron there...) in another of his volumes, which is almost identical to _The Bird 'Grip'_. There are a lot of weird fairy tales in those books...


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